I am trained to look for the reasons that systems are the way they are, or why things evolved to there present state. Sometimes is was by design, but typically our systems and plans adapt to new influences.
let me give an example. When cell phones became widespread and people migrated away from landlines, we lost something. The phone book. Landlines were all listed in a searchable directory, if you needed to find someone you could search that directory and get an address and a phone number to contact that person. Cell phones had no directory. Was it planned or by design? Not sure, but it left a void. From that void came Facebook. Facebook is essentially a worldwide phone book. And you only need one, so it looks like it will be around for a bit. Now Facebook is a more capable solution, bit if there was a cell phone directory, it would have never succeeded as it did.
God made us. When He first made us, we were not given an abundance of understanding or knowledge. Angels were created with both. When God integrated our soul into a mortal body, He gave us a path, a challenge, and a solution.
Our path. Human civilization is on a path that ends when we understand God completely and , in complete understanding, decide whether we will march with God or not. In order to gain that absolute full understanding of God, human civilization was saddled with imperfect bodies and an empty memory. Each generation adds knowledge and understanding to that collective memory and develops traits that make it possible to live perfectly in imperfect bodies.
If you look at the sins that beset us, many of them are rooted in our mortal bodies. Gluttony, sexual desires, desire for wealth, etc. all temptation and sins that are based on the mortal body our soul is integrated into. Once free, you won’t have those temptations or sins. God had a reason to put us into mortal bodies and have us progressively grow into a better people, one that resembles God himself.
Our challenge. Years ago, while sitting with Orthodox Jewish rabbis the topic of YouTube, which was fairly new at the time, came up. I remarked that YouTube gives us a glimpse of what God sees every moment of every day. From His throne in Heaven he sees each of us and watches us. He sees us dancing, crying, being bored, being tempted, sinning, and avoiding sin. He sees our silly moments, our mean moments, our confused moments, our compassionnlive, depression, anxiety, He sees it all for everyone of us. If you look st every video uploaded today you will see human life being played out from a million points of view, something God sees times a million because He sees our hearts.
Our challenge is to live a life, make decisions and plans, that God would make if He were walking in our shoes. The imitation of God is our challenge. To do that we need to understand how God operates and why He does what He does. Something we learn from experience. You cannot learn patience in Heaven, you won’t need patience. You need imperfection to learn patience. God gave you an imperfect world so you can appreciate how patient God is with us, and calls us to be patient like Him. He gave us a world that has hostility to faith in Christ, so we could understand that being faithful takes commitment and will hurt sometimes, but God is faithful even when we do things that offend Him, and He wants us to imitate His faithfulness.
The solution. God knew that it was going to take us centuries to get to a point where we could understand God enough to accept His spirit. Jesus came to release the Spirit. His life dealt with one of the issues that arise when an immortal soul merges with a mortal body. Mortals require proof. We can accept verification from our peers. Jesus came and very publicly died. Recorded and witnessed. No doubt he was dead. When He died all of his teachings meant very little, they were claims of a crazy person who claimed to be God. Everyone who had met Him, been healed, heard His words, were faced with a reality that they had been wasting there time. When He rose ,in a very public verified way, our mortal side was given proof that He was God.
We would think that would be enough. But mankind had seen God before and had walked away. If there wasn’t a pillar of fire, a tabernacle, a burning bush, we, as a people doubt that God is really engaged with us. God knew that. So we gave us the Holy Spirit. When we accept Jesus, God sends His spirit to live in us. But that Spirit needs to be fed. Christ told us how we would be fed when He said, this is my body and this is ny blood, do this in memory of me.
You will not succeed if you do not feed the Spirit in you, and as you do your Faith will grow. As your faith grows ,your understanding and appreciation of God and His live will grow.
The musings of Peter 