Sacred Contradictions

In order to understand and better analyze this important issue, I made a series of remarks and then a brief analysis of how evolved the various civilizations that have shaped humanity.

• In this tragic era in which we live, we find more than ever, there are many people who talk about values, criticize, and propose solutions.

• The reality is that most people no longer believe in anything and are desperate for the world economic crisis. President George Bush won the U.S. presidency with a surplus 5 billion dollars and handed the presidency with a deficit of a trillion dollars. The unjust war that Bush promoted left hundreds of thousands of innocent people dead or injured and Asia Minor are in ruins.

• For many researchers, the source of this tragedy is the lack of responsibility that arises by not giving to life the greatest value it has, and its transcendence. Man transcends its life in a positive or negative sense. Until now, Mankind has wasted our Planet and now is an ill Planet; where there is a lot of violence, social injustice, and suffering. Mankind has transcended in a negative way.

• Let"s try finding the origin of so much pain, and if possible giving some suggestions, in a humble way.

Introduction

Is it possible to pack for our last trip? It will arrive soon. Do we have First Class Ticket for that trip? Is it possible to buy or get it with good connections? Let´s remember how this problem was considered by ancient civilizations and how they evolved.

It will be interesting to know how these civilizations understand the meaning of Life, and which ones are their main contradictions in their sacred books.

We may say Mankind has destroyed a great part of our planet, instead of taking care of it. There is a lot of violence, social injustice and mainly a lot of people are not responsible. Is that failure the result of inappropriate teaching of the religions?

Please, let"s study how each one of the main cultures understands "The Meaning of Life," and the main proved contradictions of the Jewish Bible or Old Testament, of the Bible of Christians or New Testament, and of the Bible of Muslims or Holy Book of Koran (Qur"an)

This brief analysis will help us to find the best way to increase our responsibility"s sense, take care of our planet, so destroyed now, and in some way "have a first class ticket for our last trip" With these reflections, is sure violence will diminish and we will be able to help more our families, friends and whole Mankind by conviction, more than by laws or threatens.

Which would be the path of our life if we had born in a different culture that the one we have?

Let"s make a synthesis of the evolution of each one of them, next let"s study some of the main contradictions we find in each one, and the visualization about the meaning of life each culture has.

The meaning of life constitutes a philosophical question concerning the purpose and significance of human existence or biological life in general. This concept can be expressed through a variety of related questions, such as why are we here? What's life all about? And what is the meaning of it all? It has been the subject of much philosophical, scientific, and theological speculation throughout history. There have been a large number of answers to these questions from different cultural and ideological backgrounds.

The meaning of life is deeply mixed with the philosophical and religious conceptions of existence, consciousness, and happiness, and touches on many other issues, such as symbolic meaning, ontology, value, purpose, ethics, good and evil, free will, conceptions of God, the existence of God, the soul, and the afterlife. Scientific contributions are more indirect; by describing the empirical facts about the Universe, science provides some context and sets parameters for conversations on related topics. An alternative, human-centric, and not a cosmic/religious approach is the question "What is the meaning of my life?" The value of the question pertaining to the purpose of life may coincide with the achievement of ultimate reality, if that is believed by one to exist. Some scholars have a concise response about these ideas. Meaning of Life means to be able to arrive to plenitude of being and existing where there is no matter, no space, no time, but Plenitude in Whom gave us life.

It is accepted all over the world that sense of fear started to be the origin of all religions.

When a torment was so strong so as to destroy the houses of the primitive man, He decided to create a god of the winds or thunderstorms, in order to have his favor. People believed with some gifts given to that god, will help them not suffer so much. The fear of losing crops moved Man to have a goddess of fertility and established some rituals in order to give to her some gifts, so to obtain better crops.

All talk about God staggers under impossible difficulties. Yet monotheists have all been very positive about language at the same time as they have denied its capacity to express the transcendent reality. The God of Jews, Christians and Muslims is a God who in some way speaks. The Word of God has shaped the history of our culture. We have to decide whether the word "God" has any meaning for us today.

One of the reasons why religion seems irrelevant today is that many of us no longer have the sense that we are surrounded by the unseen. Our culture educates us to focus our attention on the physical and material world in front of us. One of its consequences is that we have eliminated the sense of the "spiritual" or the "holy" which pervades the lives of people in more traditional societies at every level and which was once an essential component of our human experience of the world. In the South Sea Islands, they call this mysterious force manna; others experience it as a presence of spirit; sometimes it has been felt as an impersonal power, like a form of radioactivity or electricity. It was believed to reside in the tribal chief, in plants, rocks or animals. The Latin"s experienced Numina (spirits) in sacred groves.

Sumeria

The first notions about religion are found in Sumeria.

The cult of the Mother Goddess expressed a sense that the fertility which was transforming human life was actually scared. She was called Inana in ancient Sumeria, Ishtar in Babylon, Anat in Canaan, Isis in Egypt and Aphrodite in Greece. These myths were not intended to be taken literally, but were metaphorical attempts to describe a reality that was too complex and elusive to express in another way. Mesopotamia, the Tigris-Euphrates valley, in what is now Iraq had been inhabited as early as 4000 years before CE by the people known as the Sumerians. In their cities of Ur, Erech, and Kish, the Sumerians devised their cuneiform script, built the extraordinary temple-towers called ziggurats. Afterward the region was invaded by the Semitic Akkadians, who had adopted the language and culture of Sumer. Later in 2000 BCE the Amorites had conquered this Sumerian-Akkadian civilization and made Babylon their capital. Finally, some 500 years later, the Assyrians had settled in nearby Ashur and eventually conquered Babylon itself during the eight centuries before CE. This Babylonian tradition also affected the mythology and religion of Canaan, which would become the Promised Land of the ancient Israelites.

Babylon

In this culture, they celebrated the great New Year Festival during the month of Nisan (April) in this celebration, enthroned the King and established her reign for another year. A scapegoat was killed to cancel the old, dying year; a mock battle reenacted the struggle of the gods against the forces of destruction. On the afternoon of the fourth day of the Festival, priest and choristers filled into the Holy of Holies to recite the Enuma Elish, the epic poem which celebrated the victory of the gods over chaos. A brief look at the Enuma Elish gives us some insight into the spiritual which gave birth to our own God Creator centuries later. Even though the Biblical and Koranic account of creation would ultimately take a very different form, these strange myths never entirely disappeared, but would reenter the history of God at a much later date, clothed in a monotheistic idiom.

In the Enuma Elish the story begins with the creation of the gods themselves. In the beginning, said the Enuma Elish two by two from a formless, watery waste (a substance which was itself divine) In Babylonian myth (as later in the Bible) there was no creation out of nothing, an idea that was alien to the ancient world. Before either the gods or human beings existed, this sacred raw material has existed from all eternity. When the Babylonians tried to imagine this primordial divine stuff, they taught that it must have been similar to the swampy wasteland of Mesopotamia, where floods constantly threatened to wipe out the frail works of men. In the Enuma Elish, chaos is not a fiery, seething mass, therefore, but a sloppy mess where everything lacks boundary, definition and identity.

Indus Valley

In the seventeenth century BCE, Aryans from what is now Iran had invaded the Indus Valley and subdued the indigenous population. They had imposed their religious ideas, which we find expressed in the collection of odes known as the Rig-Veda. There we find a multitude of gods, expressing many of the same values as the deities of the Middle East and presenting the forces of nature as instinct with power, life and personality. Yet there were signs that people were beginning to see that the various gods might simply be manifestations of one divine Absolute that transcended them all. Like the Babylonians, the Aryans were quite aware that their myths were not factual accounts of reality but expressed a mystery that not even the gods themselves could explain adequately.

The religion of the Vedas did not attempt to explain the origins of life or to give privileged answers to philosophical questions. Instead, it was designed to help people to come to terms with the wonder and terror of existence. The ideas of the indigenous population that have been suppressed in the centuries following the Aryan invasions surfaced and led to a new religious hunger. The revived interest in karma, the notion that one"s destiny is determined by one"s own actions, made people unwilling to blame the gods for the irresponsible behavior of human beings. Increasingly the gods were seen as symbols of a single transcendent Reality. Vedic religion had become preoccupied with the rituals of sacrifice, but the revived interest in the old Indian practice of Yoga (the "yoking" of the powers of the mind by special disciplines of concentration) meant that people became dissatisfied with a religion that concentrated on externals. Sacrifice and liturgy were not enough: they wanted to discover the inner meaning of these rites. In India the gods were no longer seen as other beings which were external to their worshippers; instead men and women sought to achieve an inward realization of truth.

Hindus and Buddhists sought new ways to transcend the gods, to go beyond them. During the eight centuries before CE, sages began to address these issues in the treatises called the Aranyakas and the Upanishads, known collectively as the Vedanta: the end of the Vedas. More and more Upanishads appeared, until the end of the fifth century BCE there were about 200 of them. The Upanishads evolved a distinctive conception of godhood that transcends the gods but is found to be intimately present in all things.

In Vedic religion, people had expressed a holy power in the sacrificial ritual. They had called this sacred power Brahman. The priestly caste, (known as Brahmans) was also believed to possess this power. The whole world was seen as the divine activity welling up from the mysterious being of Brahman, which was the inner meaning of all existence. The Upanishads encouraged people to cultivate a sense of Brahman in all things. Everything that happens to become a manifestation of Brahman: true insight lay in the perception of the unity behind the different phenomena. Brahman cannot be addressed as "thou"; it is a neutral term, it is neither he nor she; nor is it experienced as the will of sovereign deity. Brahman does not speak to Mankind. It cannot meet men and women; it transcends all such human activities. Nor does it respond to us in a personal way: sin does not "offend" it, and it cannot be said to "love" us or be "angry." Thanking or praising it for creating the world would be entirely inappropriate.

This divine power would be utterly alien where it not for the fact that it also pervades, sustains, and inspires us.

The eternal principle within each individual was called Atman: it was a new version of the old holistic vision of paganism, a rediscovery in new terms of the One Life within us and abroad which was essentially divine.

Thus, even though we cannot see it, Brahman pervades the world and, as Atman, is found eternally within each of us.

Atman prevented God from becoming an idol, an exterior Reality "out there," a projection of our own fears and desires. God is not seen in Hinduism as a Being, added on to the world as we know it, therefore it is not identical with the world. There was no way that we could fathom this out by reason. It is only "revealed" to us with an experience which cannot be expressed in words or concepts. Brahman is "What cannot speak with words but that whereby the mind can think." It is impossible to speak of a God that is as immanent as this or to think about it, making it a mere object of thought. It is a Reality that can only be discerned in ecstasy in the original sense of going beyond the self:

God comes to the thought of those who know Him beyond thought, not to those who imagine He can be attained by thought. It is unknown to the learned and known to the simple. It is known in the ecstasy of an awakening that opens the door of eternal life.

Like the gods, reason is not denied but transcended. The experience of Brahman or Atman cannot be explained rationally any more than a piece of music of a poem. Intelligence is necessary for the making of such a work of art and its appreciation, but it offers an experience that goes beyond the purely logical or cerebral faculty. This will also be a constant theme in religions.

The ideal of personal transcendence was embodied in the Yogi, who would leave his family and abandon all social ties and responsibilities to seek enlightenment, putting himself in another realm of being. In about 538 BCE, a young man named Siddhartha Gautama also left his beautiful wife, his son his luxurious home in Kapilavashtu, about 100 miles north of Benares and become a mendicant ascetic. He had been appalled by the spectacle of suffering and wanted to discover the secret to end the pain of existence that he could see in everything around him. For six years he sat at the feet of various Hindu gurus and undertook fearful penances, but made no headway. The doctrines of the sages did not appeal to him, and his mortifications had simply made him despair. It was not until he abandoned these methods completely and put himself into a trance in one night that he gained enlightenment. The whole cosmos rejoiced, the earth rocked, the flowers fell from heaven, fragrant breezes blew and the gods in their various heavens rejoiced. Yet again, as in the pagan vision, the gods, nature and mankind were bound together in sympathy. There was a new hope of liberation from suffering and the attainment of nirvana, the end of pain. Gautama had become the Buddha, the Enlightened One. At first, the demon Mara tempted him to stay where he was and enjoy his new found bliss: it was not used to try to spread the word because nobody would believe him. But two of the gods of the traditional pantheon-Maha Brahma and Sakra, Lord of the devas-came to the Buddha and begged him to explain his method to the world. The Buddha agreed and for the next forty-five years he tramped all over India, preaching his message: in this world of suffering, only one thing was stable and firm. This was Dharma, the truth about right living, which alone could free us from pain.

This was nothing to do with God, and urged his disciples to save themselves. This was possible by living a life of compassion for all living beings, speaking and behaving gently, kindly and accurately and refraining from anything like drugs, or intoxicants that cloud the mind. The Buddha did not claim to have invented this system. He insisted that he had discovered it: "I have seen an ancient path, an ancient road, trodden by Buddhas of a bygone age"

Karma bound men and women to an endless cycle of rebirth into a series of painful lives. But if they could reform their egotistic attitudes, they could change their destiny. The Buddha compared the process of rebirth to a flame which lights a lamp, from which a second lamp is lit, and so on until the flame is extinguished. If somebody is still aflame at death with a wrong attitude, he or she will simply light another lamp. But if the fire is put on, the circle of suffering will cease and nirvana will be attained. "Nirvana" literally means "cooling off" or "going out." It is not a mere negative state, however, but plays a role in Buddhist life that is analogous to God.

Nirvana is permanent, stable, imperishable, immovable, ageless, deathless, unborn, and unbecoming, that it is power, bliss and happiness, the secure refuge, the shelter and the place of unassailable security; that it is the real Truth and the Supreme Reality; that it is the good, the supreme goal and the one and only consummation of our life, the eternal, hidden and incomprehensible Peace.

Some Buddhist might object to this comparison because they find the concept of "God" too limiting to express their conception of ultimate reality. Attaining Nirvana is not like "going to heaven" as Christians often understand it. We could not define nirvana because our words and concepts are tied to the world of sense and flux.

Meaning of Life in Hinduism

Hinduism Meaning of Life: Hinduism and the paths of liberation

Hinduism and the paths of liberation

According to Hinduism, liberation does not mean dying and going to heaven. Heavenly life is as desirable or undesirable as earthly life because in the ultimate sense, heavenly life is also limited and transient, thought compared to earthly life it may be longer and more intense. True liberation means liberation of the individual soul from the cycle of births and deaths, from the sense of duality and separation, and union with Brahman, the Supreme Soul. 

Will our Life Transcend to Plenitude of Being and Existing in The One Who gave us Life?

Meaning of Life in Buddhism

This began in the 6th cents. BCE in India, with enlighten of Gautama. The Buddha regards himself as a guide and a physician. He taught in the content of the basic components of Hindu Cosmology and psychology.

The teaching of the Buddha is summarized in the Four Noble Truths.

The Four Noble Truths

In his first sermon after attaining enlightenment, the Buddha taught the "Four Noble Truths," which form the foundation of belief for all branches of Buddhism:

• All of life is marked by suffering.

• Suffering is caused by desire and attachment.

• Suffering can be stopped.

• The way to end suffering is to follow the Noble Eightfold Path. 

The Noble Eightfold Path

According to the fourth Noble Truth, one can permanently escape suffering by following the Noble Eightfold Path. The word "right" in these eight items designates "true" or "correct," to distinguish the Buddhist way from others: It is not enough to gain knowledge; it must be right knowledge.

• Right knowledge

• Right intention

• Right speech

• Right action

• Right livelihood

• Right effort

• Right mindfulness

• Right concentration

In view of both the importance and the difficulty of accomplishing these eight activities and eliminating suffering, the Buddha and the earliest Buddhist advocated the monastic life as the surest way to enlightenment. This remains the perspective today in what is known as Theravada ("Way of the Elders") Buddhism, which predominates in Southeast Asia.

In Theravada Buddhism, there is certainly room for the laity to participate in Buddhism, but it is generally thought that they must be reborn as monk before they can attain enlightenment. Thus the purpose of life of the Buddhist laity is to gain merit (good karma) by supporting the monks and doing other good deeds, in the hopes that the next life would be one favorable to gaining enlightenment.

The Buddha stated: Obtain salvation by means of having good behavior, help yourself, help everybody, and do not harm any living creature.

Will our Life Transcend to Plenitude of Being and Existing in The One Who gave us Life?

Israel

The person who started the Genesis, the first book of the Bible, is known as a wandering chieftain who had laid their people from Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean at the end of the third millennium BCE. These wanderers, some of whom are called Abiru, Apiru o Habiru in Mesopotamian and Egyptian sources, spoke West Semitic languages, of which Hebrew was one. They were not regular desert nomads like the Bedouin, who migrated with their flocks according to the cycle of the seasons, but were more difficult to classify and, as such, were frequently in conflict with the conservative authorities. Some served as mercenaries, other become government employees, others worked as merchants, servants or tinkers. Some became rich and might then try to acquire land and settle down. The stories about Abraham in the book of Genesis show him serving the King of Sodom as a mercenary and describe his frequent conflicts with the authorities of Canaan and its environs. Abram, who will later be renamed Abraham ("Father of a Multitude"), is commanded by Yahweh to leave his family in Haran, in what is now eastern Turkey, and migrate to Canaan near the Mediterranean Sea. We have been told that his father, Terah, a pagan, had already migrated westward with his family from Ur. Now Yahweh tells Abraham that he has a special destiny: he will become the father of a mighty nation that will one day be more numerous than the stars in the sky, and one day his descendants will poses the land of Canaan as their own.

But who is Yahweh? It is highly likely that was El, the High God of Canaan. The deity introduces himself to Abraham as El Shaddai (El of the Mountain) which was one of El"s traditional titles. Elsewhere is called El Elyon (The Most High God) or El of Bethel. The name of the Canaanite High God is preserved in such Hebrew names as Isra-El or Ishma-El. Abraham"s god El is very mild deity. He appears to Abraham as a friend and sometimes even assumes human form. This type of divine apparition, known as an epiphany, was quite common in the pagan world of antiquity. Please read Chapter 18 of Genesis. The myth of the Exodus from Egypt, when God led Moses and the children of Israel to freedom is equally offensive to modern sensibilities. Pharaoh was reluctant to let the people of Israel to go, so to force his hand God sent ten fearful plagues upon the people of Egypt. Pharaoh decided to let the Israelites leave but later changed his mind and pursued them with his army. He caught up with them at the Sea or Reeds, but God saved the Israelites by opening the sea and letting them cross dry-shod. When the Egyptians following in their wake, He closed the waters and drowned the Pharaoh and his army. This is a brutal, partial and murderous god: a god of war who would be known as Yahweh Sabaoth, the God of Armies. He is passionately partisan, has little compassion for anyone but his own favorites and is simple a tribal deity. Some mother scholars suggest that the Exodus story is a mythical rendering of a successful peasants rendering of a successful peasants" revolt against the suzerainty of Egypt and its allies in Canaan. The bloody story of the Exodus would continue to inspire dangerous conceptions of the divine and vengeful theology. In Book Numbers Chapter 31, we find the terrible act of vengeance dictated by Moses to his people, in order to destroy the Midianites. This is a pagan god and not the real God. We may read in Numbers 31, 17 Mosses commanded: "Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man" That was commanded by a pagan god, not by God.

While the God of Moses had been triumphalist, the God of Isaiah was full of sorrow. The prophesy, as it has come down to us, begins with a lament that is highly unflattering to the people of the covenant: the ox and the ass know their owners, but "Israel knows nothing, my people understand nothing" (Isaiah 1:3) Yahweh was utterly revolted by the animal sacrifices in the Temple, sickened by the fact of calves, the blood of bulls and goats and the reeking blood that smoked from the holocausts. He could not bear their festivals, new Year Ceremonies and pilgrimages (Isaiah: 11-15). This would have shocked Isaiah"s audience: in the Meddle East these Celtic celebrations were of the essence of religion. The pagan gods depended upon the ceremonies to renew their depleted energies; their prestige depended in part upon the magnificence of their temples. Now Yahweh was actually saying that these things were utterly meaningless. Isaiah felt that exterior observance was not enough. The Israelites must discover the inner meaning of their religion.

Yahweh wanted compassion rather than sacrifice:

You may multiply your prayers,

I shall not listen.

Your hand is covered with blood,

Wash, make yourself clean.

Take your wrong-doing out of my sight.

Cease to do evil.

Learn to do good,

Search for justice,

Help the oppressed,

Be just to the orphan,

Plead for the widow. (Amos 7:15-17)

The prophets had discovered for themselves the overriding duty of compassion, which would become the hallmark of all the mayor religions. Amos was the first of the prophets to emphasize the importance of social justice and compassion. The prophet Hosea makes Yahweh to say: "What I want is love, not sacrifice; knowledge of Elohim (God) not holocausts. (Hosea: 6, 6)

In the Babylonian and Canaanite myth developed before the existence of Israel, we find the god Yahweh was an important god in the Council of gods in Canaan. The religion of the One God was not coming as easily to the Israelites as Buddhism or Hinduism to the people of the subcontinent. Yahweh did not seem able to transcend the older deities in a peaceful, natural manner. He had to fight it out. Thus in Psalm 82 we see him making a play for the leadership of the divine assembly, which had played such an important role in both cultures:

Yahweh takes his stand in the Council of El

To deliver judgments among the gods.

"No more mockery of justice

No more favoring the wicked!

Let the weak and the orphan have justice,

Be fair to the wretched and the destitute,

Rescue the weak and needy,

Save them from the clutches of the wicked!"

Ignorant and senseless, they carry on blindly,

Undermining the very basis of human society.

I once said, "You too are gods,

Sons of El Elyon, all of you";

But all the same, you shall die like men;

As one man, gods, you shall fall.

When he stood up to confront the Council over which El has presided from time immemorial, Yahweh accused the other gods of failing to meet the social challenge of the day.

We shall see that later in the history of religions, some Jews, Christians and Muslims worked on this early image of the absolute reality and arrived at a conception that was closer to the Hindu or Buddhist visions.

The prophets were in an important sense creating a god in their own image. Isaiah a member of the royal family had seen Yahweh as a king. Amos had ascribed his own empathy with the suffering poor to Yahweh; Hosea saw Yahweh as a Jilted husband, who still continued to feel a yearning tenderness for his wife. All religion must begin with some anthropomorphism. A deity which is utterly remote from humanity such as Aristotle"s Unmoved Mover cannot inspire a spiritual quest.

Also we have in 2 Sam 11:15 The story about the cruelty and big sin of King David who committed adultery with the wife of his most loved friends, general Uriah who was also killed by him. And in Gen 19, 31 it is explained how Lot committed incest with his 2 daughters. These horrible stories are mentioned in the sacred Koran book, as terrible mistakes written in the Bible.

Unlike the pagan deities, Yahweh was not in any of the forces of Nature, but in a realm apart. He is experienced in the scarcely perceptible timbre of a tiny breeze in the paradox of a voiced silence. Strange as it may seem, the idea of "God" like the other great religious insights of the period, developed in a market economy in a spirit of aggressive capitalism. Some scholars believe Israel"s religion, started to be a pagan religion, which was evolving so much that their concept of God at the beginning, was quite different from the one they have now.

Meaning of Life in Israel

Is the religion of a Chosen People and the Hebrew Prophets spoken for God? After the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem (586 B.C.) and the Babylonian exile, Jewish communities were organized around synagogues, where rabbis expounded and interpreted the law that had been given to this person.

An idiot is more than capable of leading a comfortable life. He doesn"t suffer much, he enjoys ice cream, insults fly right over his head, and he always puts on a smile… The world is b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l.

But he doesn"t experience anything beyond his ice cream. He lacks the capacity to appreciate higher pleasures beyond the physical—relationships, meaning, and spirituality.

Living only for material pleasure and comfort is not really living. We also need to understand the deeper existential meaning of life. Sooner or later, every human being is faced with the cold, hard reality: "What"s my life all about?"

That"s why we teach our children to say the Shema: "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One."

If you want to live, be real. Know what you are willing to die for. Then you are genuinely alive, and able to truly achieve the highest form of pleasure from living.

Shakespeare said, "A coward dies many a death, a brave man dies but once." All of us are going to die. The question is do you want to live?

Will our Life Transcend to Plenitude of Being and Existing in The One Who gave us Life?

Main contradictions in Jewish Bible

The Bible is riddled with repetitions and contradictions, things that the Bible bangers would be quick to point out in anything that they want to criticize. For instance, Genesis 1 and 2 disagree about the order in which things are created, and how satisfied God is about the results of his labors. The flood story is really two interwoven stories that contradict each other on how many of each kind of animal are to be brought into the Ark–is it one pair each or seven pairs each of the "clean" ones? Repetitions and contradictions are understandable for a hodgepodge collection of documents, but not for some carefully constructed treatise, reflecting a well-thought-out plan.

The sins of the father

ISA 14:21 Prepare slaughter for his children for the iniquity of their fathers; that they do not rise, nor possess the land, nor fill the face of the world with cities.

DEU 24:16 The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin.

Should we kill?

• Exodus 20:13 "Thou shalt not kill."

• Leviticus 24:17 "And he that killeth any man shall surely be put to death."

Vs.

• Exodus 32:27 "Thus sayeth the Lord God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side . . . And slay every man his brother . . . Companion . . . Neighbor."

Should we tell lies?

• Exodus 20:16 "Thou shalt not bear false witness."

• Proverbs 12:22 "Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord."

Vs.

• I Kings 22:23 "The Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets, and the Lord hath spoken evil concerning thee."

Does God change his mind?

• Malachi 3:6 "For I am the Lord; I change not."

• Numbers 23:19 "God is not a man that he should lie; neither the son of man, which he should repent."

• Ezekiel 24:14 "I the Lord have spoken it: it shall come to pass, and I will do it; I will not go back, neither will I spare, neither will I repent."

Vs.

• Exodus 32:14 "And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people."

• Genesis 6:6,7 "And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth . . . And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth . . . For it repenteth me that I have made him."

• Jonah 3:10 ". . . And God repented of the evil, which he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not."

See also II Kings 20:1-7, Numbers 16:20-35, Numbers 16:44-50.

See Genesis 18:23-33, where Abraham gets God to change his mind about the minimum number of righteous people in Sodom required to avoid destruction, bargaining down from fifty to ten. (An omniscient God must have known that he was playing with Abraham's hopes for mercy–he destroyed the city anyway.)

Are we punished for our parents' sins?

• Exodus 20:5 "For I the Lord thy God I am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation." (Repeated in Deuteronomy 5:9)

• Exodus 34:6-7 " . . . The Lord God, merciful and gracious, . . . That will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation."

Vs.

• Ezekiel 18:20 "The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father."

• Deuteronomy 24:16 "The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin."

How many Gods are there?

• Deuteronomy 6:4 "The Lord our God is one Lord."

Vs.

• Genesis 1:26 "And God said, Let us make man in our image."

• Genesis 3:22 "And the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become as one of us, to know good and evil."

It does no good to claim that "Let us" is the magisterial "we." Such usage implies inclusivity of all authorities under a king's leadership. Invoking the Trinity solves nothing because such an idea is more. Does God live in the light?

• Daniel 2:22 "He [God] knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with him." See also Psalm 143:3, II Corinthians 6:14, and Hebrews 12:18-22.

Vs.

• I Kings 8:12 "Then spake Solomon, The Lord said that he would dwell in the thick darkness." (Repeated in II Chronicles 6:1)

• II Samuel 22:12 "And he made darkness pavilions round about him, dark waters, and thick clouds of the skies."

• Psalm 18:11 "He made darkness his secret place; his pavilion round about him were dark waters and thick clouds of the skies."

• Psalm 97:1-2 "The Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice . . . Clouds and darkness are round about him."

Does God accept human sacrifice?

• Deuteronomy 12:31 "Thou shalt not do so unto the Lord thy God: for every abomination to the Lord, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods."

Vs.

• Genesis 22:2 "And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of."

• Exodus 22:29 "For thou shalt not delay to offer the first of thy ripe fruits, and of thy liquors; the firstborn of thy sons shalt thou give unto me."

Christianity

SS Johan Paul II was the most important leader of Christianity. When he left Mexico said: "We arrive to the end of this Second Millennium, with Man despising Man" Also he asked pardon to Mankind for the crimes committed by the Catholic Church (Inquisition, Crusades, etc.). Now in year 2010, the new Pope SS Benedict XVI or Joseph Ratzinger, expressed: The Catholic Church is being punished by God for its big sins, mainly by some religious priests abusing children. Let"s help restore the wonderful teachings of Jesus, in order to help Mankind to live in peace and with true responsibility. Please dare to think how would be your life if you would have borne as a sincere Jew. Would you think Christians worship a Jew? How would be your life if you would have borne a sincere Muslim? Would you think Christians worship a Jew? For them, Jesus is a Prophet, a Great Master, and for them the sentence "Son of God" is a blasphemy. Most people agree it is not possible for a creature to explain its Creator. But some religious leaders say it is explained by the Revealed Teaching. But which one of the Revelers is the right? The One offered by Jews, or by Muslims, or by Christians, or by Hindus, or Which One?

Christianity has its origins in The Book of Genesis.

• a) It is grounded in the Original Fault, explained in Genesis.

Eva was cheated by the serpent, and then she cheats her husband Adam. Then they have two children. One kills the other. Cain kills Abel.

The biggest sin is done when they disobey the commandment of God: "You will not eat from the forbidden fruit"

That is an infinite sin. In order to erase that sin, it is necessary to have an infinite repair. This infinite repair is done when The Only One God"s Son, in an infinite act of generosity, gives His Life to get the pardon of that infinite sin. The very ground of this teaching is in the statement that Our Creator made Man at His image and resemblance. So we may say Our Creator is a Perfect and Infinite Person, and Mankind is not. In other religions, they believe Our Creator is much more than a Person.

• b) Each behavior which a person makes against the God"s Will, is an infinite sin. This sin, only may be pardoned when the sinner asks forgiveness, and believe Jesus is The Only One God"s Son, Whom has an infinite grace to obtain that pardon.

These ways of thinking is very dangerous, because with that fact is possible to say or understand that a very big sin, like abortion, or many others, can be easily pardoned if the sinner ask for pardon, believes in Jesus, and assures he will not repeat that sin again. But as in the Good News is stipulated, the sinner may be pardoned 70 times 7, (Matthew 18:21-22) so it is very easy to repeat the same procedure. This situation in some way is the origin of actual corruption, some Scholars say.

Some people think Jesus was and is the wisest of men. He said: "Resist no evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also." (Matthew 5:39) Really it is not a principle which is a matter of fact Christians accept. This text was intended in a figurative sense, or not?

Jesus said also: "Judge not lest ye be judged" That principle was not popular in the law courts of Christian courts. Also The Lord said: "Give to Him that asked (Matthew 5:42) of thee and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away." Another wonderful sentence said by Jesus was: "If thou will be perfect, go and sell that which thou hast, and give it to the poor." (Matthew 19:21) If we analyze the way we behave, maybe most of the ones whom put in themselves the label of Christians, will recognize they really they are not Christians.

In the wonderful teaching of Jesus, also we find:

"The Son of Man shall send forth His angels; and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend; and them which do inquiry; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire; there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth." (Matthew 13:41) Then we may remember how at the second coming He is going to divide the sheep from the goats, and He is going to say to the goats: "Depart from me, ye cursed into everlasting fire." (Matthew 25:41) Then He says again, "If thy hand offend thee, cut it off; (Mark 9:43) it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched; where the worm dieth not and the fire is nor quenched."