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Fuse

Our Failure to Piss Him Off

The evil we did to him ought to have, at the very least, pissed him off. It ought to have antagonized him. It ought to have earned us a place on his shit list. It ought to have provoked his natural instinct for justice. It ought to have triggered his reflex for revenge, retaliation and retribution (Romans 12:19). It ought to have transformed him into our enemy - into a misanthropic monster - into the God who hates us. It ought to have shifted God from the pro-human team to the anti-human team with the serpent and his minions. When the fuse is lit, the bomb ordinarily explodes. But, remarkably, it did not. The fuse worked but the bomb was a dud (Isaiah 55:8-9). We gave him good cause to repay us in kind, but he did not (Romans 12:19). The evil we did to him did not extinguish his love for us or reduce it by even the slightest degree. He clung to his love for us, held tight and refused to let go.  God let us get away with murder - with deicide. Such is the nature of God! Wow! Our God is a beneficent philanthropist not a misanthropic monster. We tried but failed to drain his heart of love for us. This is the good news of great joy - very good news for us indeed. 

The evil we did to him ought to have caused his love for us to fade as we tortured him and to die when we killed him. Surprisingly, it did not. His love for us survived the evil baptism into which we immersed him. He emerged still alive and still in love with us .

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What was the Greatest Miracle that Jesus performed during His visit?
What was the Greatest Miracle that Jesus performed during His visit?

What was the greatest miracle that Jesus performed during His visit to us here in the Valley of Tears? It is not what you think. It is our failure to piss him off. It is our failure to earn a place on his shit list. We tortured and killed him. He forgave us. Forgiveness is the pleasant surprise that emerged from the violent collision between Jesus and the evil that we did to him on the road from the Crucifixion to the Resurrection. Surprise! Our God is not like us. Forgiveness for the evil that we did to him is the window through which we catch a glimpse of God from here on earth. It is the foundation of our understanding of God. It is the good news of great joy. It is the epicenter of Christianity. It is the source from which everything Christian is derived. It is the gold standard by which the genuine is distinguished from the spurious - by which the fair is distinguished from the foul. To know forgiveness is to know God. Forgiveness for the evil that we did to him is the high fidelity representation of the reality of God that Jesus released into the Valley of Tears to raise us from the level of the most miserable and hideous of loveless beasts scurrying, in poverty, around the ruins of Eden to the level of prosperity with our loving God and his Holy Family in paradise. The knowledge initiates the process of our deification. The God who fashioned us out of the dust with his hands put himself into the hands of the dust to leaven the dust with the yeast of divinity. The yeast of divinity is forgiveness.

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The Dud
The Dud
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Jesus was a dud. Alleluia!

We lit the fuse but the bomb did not go off.

To understand Jesus, do not ask yourself, "What happened?". That is the wrong question. Ask yourself, "What didn't happen?".

We lit the fuse of the bomb. We tortured and killed him. This ought to have pissed him off. This ought to have triggered his reflex for revenge, retaliation and retribution. The normal pattern of cause and effect ought to have held true. The bomb ought to have exploded. However, it did not. The bomb did not explode. Our God was a dud. Thanks be to God (Isaiah 55:8-9).

We killed him but He did not stay dead.

We tortured him but He did not stop loving us.

In addition,

He did not revoke the invitation to follow him back to our home in paradise. He kept the invitation open.

He did not confiscate the knowledge of God that he had distributed to us during his life. He let us keep it.

We lit the fuse. The bomb didn't explode.

The veil fell. Jesus revealed himself. What do you see? What do the facts tell you about the nature of God? What do the facts say? The facts speak to you. Listen to their message. Hear what they say. The very purpose of the exercise was to reveal to us the nature of God. 

What emerged from the evil baptism into which we immersed him? That the bomb did not explode tells us much about the nature of God.

That he did not stay dead is the proof that Jesus is God. However, that he did not stop loving us tells us so much more about God. That he did not stop loving us tells us that divinity is love. 

What more can we ask for? Ours is an omnipotent God who loves us dearly and who possesses a radical patience for the misdeeds of the children of Adam and Eve (Psalm 103:8). 

How do we persuade them that we love them dearly? We let them torture and kill us. We rise from the dead. And we continue to love them nonetheless. If this does not persuade them, nothing can or will.