According to Webster, truth is (1) : the state of being the case  (2) : the body of real things, events, and facts. Fact is the quality of being actual or something that has actual existence.

The 2 words are related, but also different. They can overlap. Truth can be a body of facts but isn’t a fact. Likewise Fact means something actually exists or happened. Something can be true, but never actually happen. Likewise something can happen and not be a truth.

For example, it is unlikely the desert of Sinai could sustain the million or more people ( Ex. 12:37; Num. 1: 46; Num. 26: 51) suggested in the biblical accounts. However, despite this the account remains true. First, it is probable and highly likely a small group of people did move from Egypt into the desert and into Israel. Archeology supports small group movements in the correct times and places. Next, even if it didn’t factually happen, it remains a truth because of the lessons it teaches and the influences the story held and continues to hold for people.

Another example is Jesus’ resurrection. While it isn’t a fact (in that it has been proven to actually occurred) it is a truth in the lessons and inspiration the event holds for people.

Mainly the different between truth and fact lie in the realm of the mind. Facts are raw knowledge. Truths are bodies of knowledge that don’t need support by facts (although are stronger when they are) but are rather supported by experience. Truths are subjective because they are experienced differently. Facts are hard edged and the same for everyone. Gravity is a fact. The Sermon on the Mount is a truth. Jesus living in Israel during the rule of Augustus is a fact. The Big Bang is a truth.

Facts and Truths are stronger together, but they also conflict. The fact of evolution conflicts with the truth of Genesis in literal reading. However, they are both “true.” One is supported by observable facts; the other is supported by experience. Both truths and facts can be disproved. Facts are easier to do so since they are based on the observable.Facts simply help us understand the actuality of this physical world. Truths are more difficult because they are held in human understanding. It takes time for human understanding to discard truths that are no longer helpful or misguided.

This process of discarding and reinterpreting truth leads us closer to an understanding of God, compassion, and what it means to be human.

We act according to what we hold in our thoughts. Focusing on the burden in the hand makes us act to keep that burden in the hand.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

- Matthew 11: 28-30

Jesus tells us His yoke is easy and the burden we pull when we follow Him is light. It took me a long time to realize His burden means no cart at all. There isn’t a yoke either. I used to think this passage meant keeping all this little commandments; always watching the mind to be sure it isn’t falling into what I considered sinful thinking. I forgot that He also said “I am gentle and humble in heart.” I was only trading one heavy cart and yoke for another. One I wrongly thought was true, and one of my own making.

So what does Jesus teach? Forgiveness, compassion, and peace.

Forgiveness allows us to leave the overflowing cart of past grievances behind. We don’t need to lug grievances around to learn from them. Keeping them with us makes it easier to react them. Forgiveness is about letting go and living in the present. Living in the past is futile; it is gone forever. The cart we pull is empty, yet it weighs more than a mountain in our minds.

Compassion lifts the yoke from the shoulders. Judgmental thoughts are heavy.  Compassion is unconditional love and regard for all things around us. How light we can feel when we realize people are not threatening or competing with us. They are living the best they can; just as we are. Coupled with forgiveness, we realize people who seem mean or angry are suffering from some problem or making a mistake. We can let it go and wish them the best instead of adding a non-existent weight to our cart. Perhaps the person who wronged you is suffering.

Peace helps us leave the cart far behind and the yoke off the shoulders. Worry is failure to live in the present. We worry about the past and the future. Neither are constructive. Past is past and cannot be changed. The future depends on our present thoughts and actions. If we live peacefully with compassion and forgiveness, the future is far more likely to be positive than if we live with worry, fear, and expectation. Expectations are rarely fulfilled. Yet despite repeated disappointments we hold onto them. Silly isn’t it? How do we turn off worry? Live in the present. Focus on the present: you are breathing and reading this sentence. See how worry instantly dissolves when you read this sentence and only read this sentence?

We choose how we think and act. Jesus teaches us a light, gentle, and easy way to live. He shows us a more natural way to live: love God, love others and yourself. Nothing else matters. The burden in the hand is only one of our own making.

IDIOTS!

I consider martyrdom a waste. Many people died because they refused to bow to a statue. How silly! Just because you bow before a statue of something or someone doesn’t mean you are worshiping it. What you are thinking determines whether you are worshiping or not. If you think the Christian God is the only god, what difference does it make if you kowtow or place something in front of a statue? You know the statue isn’t God; you have no intentions of actually worshiping. Rather you are preserving yourself.

Some may think self preservation is cowardly. A true believer would die for their faith! Paul, Peter, Stephen, and a host of other people did after all! However, a living believer is far more valuable than a dead one. A dead person cannot teach, help, inspire, heal, and spread Christianity or any faith. That is why martyrdom is a waste. Sure, a martyr can inspire others to a faith, but a living person can do far more than inspire: they can teach; they can love.

The apostles that allowed themselves to be martyred did a disservice to Christianity. The faith would have benefited more from a lifetime of Paul writing than his early demise. In many regards martyrs are selfish. By dying for a faith, they believe they are immediately going to heaven and its benefits. A good Christian would have humbly did what they could to live and help others attain heaven instead of going the “shortest” route.

So am I saying Paul, Stephen, and others should have compromised their faith and bowed to idols? No. They compromised their faith by choosing to be martyrs.  Bowing to something may have looked like worship to others, but if their mind was upon God, they weren’t worshiping the statue. They were just going through the motions. The mind is where the division is. Even pagan’s didn’t worship the idol itself. They worshiped the god the idol represented.

Of course, I am looking back and projecting upon the past. Paul and the other martyrs lived in different times, yet despite that martyrdom remains selfish and egotistical.  This fact remains true today. Sidi Bouzid sparked the Arab Spring with his self immolation, but he isn’t around to help the movement. Martyrdom may start a movement, but it doesn’t push it forward. Only the living can help the living. Christianity would have benefited more from Paul, Peter, and other others remaining alive, writing, teaching, and proclaiming the gospel until a natural death.

Martyrdom robs the world of a person’s influence and abilities to ease suffering. Remember, God did say “Thou shalt not steal.” The worst item we can steal is ourselves.

“You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain.” Exodus 20:7

Most of us think this means we shouldn’t use phrases like “goddamn” and God or Christ as expletives. We miss the main danger of this ancient lesson: overuse and unskillful use. God, Christ, Elohim, hallelujah, Jesus, El, YHWH, Jehovah, and others mean very little today.  In the commandment the word “vain” means: Producing no result; useless. Why are they useless? They are used unskillfully, yes, but mostly they are used too much! We hear people talking about God all the time. The more a word is used the less meaning it has; the less impact. “Jehovah” should give us a sense of awe (another over used word that has lost meaning) and wonder. Rather we react like we are talking about a neighbor or a friend.

Jesus is also over used. He is talked about too often! Rarity is how words retain their impact and meaning. Consider this phrase to people never heard of Jesus: “Have you heard about the man Jesus the Messiah?” They would be interested since the name and the title are not used. They sound grand. Modern people feel like rolling their eyes. Certainly Jesus and His message need to be shared and discussed. It is just far too public and common. He is plastered all over the media and rarely in His true message of compassion.  He has been diluted.

Hallelujah is a joyous word; rarely should we use it. Moments of hallelujah level joy are rare; they are the moments we survive something catastrophic or life changing. No, I don’t mean life changing like we are led to think. Life changing as in events that leave us permanently change to the core of our being. Listen to how hallelujah is used in Beethoven’s Ode to Joy in Symphony #9. THAT is the only joy we should feel when using it.

And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one. Matthew 5:36- 37.

Like the 3rd commandment, Jesus is telling us to mean what we say.  Do not use words vainly, uselessly. Swearing by your head is silly because it doesn’t mean anything! Likewise the idea holds with using God, douche, awesome, like, that, and other words so they mean nothing. What we say should have meaning and purpose. Words should only be used properly in context.

The wise don’t speak very often because their words hold meaning.

A Zen saying sums up this idea of vain words rather nicely:

“Say nothing, unless it improves silence.”

The real meaning of the holidays is to make us pause and reflect.  Holidays are a bell of mindfulness. They remind us that like the calendar year, sometime we too will be gone never to return. They remind us that family is fleeting and precious. We have very limited time to live. Every moment, every year, that passes is lost. Holidays remind us to use those moments well. Everyday could be Christmas.

For Christians, Christmas is a bell to remind us of Jesus and His life. While we should remember Him everyday, even Sunday remembrances become rote and lose meaning. There is something about a single day, a single moment, that stands out in our minds. Many of us have happy holiday memories. Why? Because we are more aware, mindful, and awake.

We are awake to the reality of the moment and its impermanence. We are awake to the reality that we, our family, and the day will all die. We attach meaning to the holiday, and that allows us to be more aware of its passing than other days. Although those other days are equally precious. That is why memories of holidays are burned into our minds. That is why Jesus resonates so strongly with Christmas.

It is possible to have that level of awakening carry on throughout each day. We just have to pause and consider the moment, this breath. As Christians we can deeply focus on Jesus at any moment. We don’t need the Lord’s Supper or a holiday to do so. The Sunday Supper, Christmas, Easter, and Good Friday are moments that help us focus. We can do so at any time without outside assistance if we only pause and breathe.

Such a holiday focus fosters appreciation for the present situation, our families, and creation. Holidays and these moments remind us that things aren’t as bad as we think they are. In fact, life is pretty good if we allow ourselves to wake up.

I understand that fundamentalist belief hinges on Genesis being literally true versus allegorically true. However, there are many problems with this. The Earth is ancient. This is backed by many different methods of dating…The dating techniques work since many modern things from GPS to communications rely on the same theories. Satellites work rather well! We can attack the methods, but since they underpin a lot of the technology they use, they obviously work.

So, like I used to think, we could say God created the Earth to look old, and He created all the forms of animals at once. This runs into several problems. First, making the Earth ancient looking makes God a liar. Why make a world that is ancient looking to make it harder for us “doubting Thomas” types? Also the evidence is far too strong against all animal forms being made at once.

Besides, holding onto traditional creationism places mankind above everything on earth. While accepting evolution places man as a part of everything on earth instead of separate. Such a view nails home our responsibility to our home planet since we are a product of her.

I believe God is a programmer and not a watch maker. There isn’t any reason for Him not to use something like evolution to make a sentient being capable of loving and coming to know Him.

Viewing God as a programmer is a wide scale view of life and the potential He gives all sentient life to become awakened and know Him.

The Bible is a finger pointing to the moon. We spend a lot of time staring at the finger instead of looking where it is pointing. Constantly disputing evolution and other ideas is a poor use of time. Rather we should follow the finger and focus on helping people and cultivating compassion.

I commented about how the word baptismos in Greek means both “to dip” and “to wash.” The other person was using Mark 16:16 along with a concordance to prove immersion is the only acceptable baptism and necessary for salvation. I discussed how Mark has 3 different conclusions that were hotly debated by Origen and others during the founding of the Vulgate canon ( the biblical canon our Bible comes from).

Quoting various Apologetic Press articles, the other side pointed out that just because there are 3 different texts, the conclusion we have isn’t untrue…. This left me a little puzzled. It is unlikely the author of Mark wrote all the conclusions; therefore only one is “true” in the sense it belongs to the original author.  Anyway, my discussion partner proceeded to affirm baptismos can only mean immersion. They even commented about how “liberal” colleges and “scholars” have their own agendas and basically can’t save my soul. Most of what I commented about was the results of my own research and Bible study.

What struck me was how people can be so quick to affirm they are correct in their beliefs even to the point of missing what I was discussing: the ambiguity of the Scripture. I ended up stating I wasn’t discussing the poor flogged horse of immersion vs other baptism practices after what I perceived as accusations of being “fallen away”. I was discussing the fact that there are many differing texts of the Bible, multiple meanings to words, and the need for in-depth study from linguistic, archaeological and historical angles for anyone who calls themselves Christian. In fact, I dare to think a person who doesn’t study their Bible and Church history in as much depth as they can aren’t following Jesus’ teaching of seeking and knocking.

I stated I was merely uncertain about the complete veracity of Scripture because there are so many versions and translations of the Bible. There are Aryan (not the Nazi related Aryan. Aryan Christian lived during the Roman Empire and rejected the new doctrine of the Trinity), Gnostic, Ethiopian, Vulgate, Eastern Orthodox, Eastern ( considered by many scholars, for what it’s worth, to be the closest to original Christianity), and many many others.

Even the Bible we have warns us about the danger of changing a single word of God’s command (Genesis and the snake).  Taking the Bible without critical thinking is akin to Eve accepting the snake at his word. We cannot know if we are missing something critical without proper study and accepting the ambiguity of Scripture.

The justice system needs reworked. Here are a few ideas:

1. The death penalty should be reserved only for the absolute worst criminals: those that refuse to change. These aren’t your typical murderers. This penalty should only be reserved for those who are like Albert Fish
2. Life imprisonment is reserved for murder and other hard crimes; however, they should always retain the chance for freedom as long as they prove themselves changed, regretful, and wishing to make amends. Prison is only reserved for these crimes. Other crimes are placed into true correctional facilities. When a prisoner is released, they are released into the correctional system as I outline next.
3. Drug abuse, theft, and other poverty related problems are placed in respective correctional facilities (not prison). Drug abusers receive the counseling, support, and medical help necessary for them to overcome their addiction. Everyone also needs a chance to learn a vocation or go to college. Poverty is the main instigator of crime. The individual is responsible for paying off their college and vocation tuition at 0 interest with a reasonable time frame.
4. Faith based counseling is a must for all offenders. The system needs to offer services in tandem with religious organizations: Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. Offering it in all religions through 3rd parties works with the separation of church and state.
5. Lesser problems can be corrected community service. Hospice and other mindfulness teaching services are excellent options. Juveniles need special focus of vocational and faith based counseling. Prevention is far less expensive than adult correction.
6. True correctional facilities are humane places that do not lock people in cells. While they must have security, they are not prisons. They are structured after colleges with dorms and classes required to attend at specific times. Discipline and the teaching of discipline is important. Alarm clocks will be provided to all students (not inmates). Prison remains an option/punishment for those who refuse participation.
7. After the person shows they are reformed, the state will help them establish new lives outside (if wanted by the person) their original place of residence. The state is responsible for helping the person find work and provide up to 3 years of financial assistance based on need. Those years of assistance may also be paid back by the individual at 0 interest. Local faith based support is also critical.

The American justice system has far too high a recitism rate. That means it isn’t doing it’s job as a correctional institution. It is better to encourage the human ability to change and not warehouse people because we don’t wish to help them improve themselves. A more Christian and compassionate justice system is less expensive and better for everyone.

So what does Karma have to do with suffering? We are viewing the question from the wrong angle. God doesn’t allow suffering. It simply is. It is a result of His loving programming. The vast majority of Causes and Effects are beautiful and good. Even a devastating flood causes benefit further down the chain. It can bring good soil or clear land for new habitat.

Even the ultimate human suffering, death, is good. It makes room for new people to live. It creates a history of knowledge and experience that remains unbroken. It pulls families closer.  It teaches those living to truly live.  It finally brings us home to God. I’d say those are good things!

Karma underlies everything, even God. God caused everything; he also has the effect of having something to love. Likewise that love caused Him to create everything. It is a closed cycle.

So why does God allow Suffering? Because all things must suffer to exist. Even God suffers. He suffers when we suffer or when a star snuffs out a planet. He also rejoices when a new life, a new solar system, or a new galaxy is born.

This question is too small when you think about it. In the grand vast panorama of the universe, suffering is small compared to the vast continuing creation seen every moment. It is small in the beauty Cause and Effect creates. Every human life is the size of a neutrino in the scope of the universe. However, every neutrino is important to the fabric of the universe.

Just the other day the cliche really hit home. I was writing in my sketchjournal about the day. It was my day off work. I spent it with my girlfriend and my hobbies. It was also a beautiful day. I asked myself on the page: if today was my last day, would I die content and happy? The answer that day: yes.

Of course, it’s easy to say that after such a good day. I told my girlfriend how important our friendship is to me. I played my favorite video games. I had success with painting and my other projects. I watered and cared for my growing bonsai. It was an excellent day. However, such days seem so rare. Too often I waste my time working and fretting. I am filled with social anxiety, thoughtlessness, and harried feelings when I can’t spend time on my passions. I go to sleep unfulfilled.

Each day is a lifetime. We are born each morning and die each night. I know I waste these daily lives. Do you? Looking at each day this way really helps me keep perspective. A full life isn’t work or material things. A full life is how you enjoy each hour. It is found in a friend’s smile and in the hug of family members. It is found in watering a flower and in a good meal. It is found in a cup of tea near our nightly death.

We can live any day with contentment and fully if we keep perspective. Some days are just harder lifetimes than others to do so. In forced social situations, for example, I have a heard time keeping perspective.

Small things are where we find contentment and fullness. Hobbies and loved ones are the most important things we can spend our daily lives on. It helps, as we near our nightly death, to list all the wonderful things we have seen and experienced. There is always something wonderful around us. It can be the beauty of autumn leaves dancing on the rain or just a lovely cup of tea. Remind yourself of the people you brightened that day. If nothing else, smile to yourself. It is good to die with a smile in the heart.

So tonight, as you lay to sleep and eternally put Today to rest, breathe, smile, and ask yourself: ” If today is my last, was it full? ” If not, then promise yourself that you will  from that very moment. That promise alone makes a full and good day.