Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Did God create us, or did we create God?

Lets assume for a moment that there is no God.  This leaves only two other possibilities. 1. The universe itself is eternal or 2. We are here as a result of a random, cosmic accident.  Science suggests that this particular universe we live in had a beginning - it has not always existed in time.  So that only leaves the cosmic accident possibility.

The amount of coincidence necessary for me to be writing this blog is astounding.

1. When the big bang happened, there had to have been just the right amount of force to the explosion that gravity did not immediately collapse it back on itself and yet the particles of light were not blown so far apart that they could not join together to form stars and planets. What caused the big bang, and what existed before the big bang is still a mystery.

2. Something slowed the particles of light down enough to form particles of matter. Scientists are searching for this something, which they call the Higgs boson.  Luckily, the matter and the antimatter that were created by this process did not annihilate each other.

3. A planet capable of producing life formed. Life produced itself.

4. This planet was mostly water, allowing the new microscopic life forms to float around freely and interact with each other.  Water has the very unusual property of being less dense in its solid state than in its liquid state, so during the time when the water was frozen, the ice floated on top, protecting the new life forms instead of crushing them under its weight.

5. The life forms evolved into plants that survive on sunlight and water and which cannot defend themselves, and into animals that have to eat the plants and/or each other in order to survive.

6. Survival of the fittest rules decided that the animals that were best at defending themselves/eating each other were the ones allowed to have offspring that survived.  The plants did okay on their own.

7. The animals evolved into a more "intelligent" being that is able to understand the universe around them (at least 3 dimensions of it), and who feel a need to be connected to that universe and/or each other. When that need is not met, they sometimes find it necessary to kill each other, even when not hungry, contradicting both their intelligence and their survival of the fittest instinct. This species finds it necessary to cover themselves, even on hot days, but let their dogs run around stark naked.

8. Humans all experience the fourth dimension of time the same way. We feel we are moving through it in a straight line at a constant rate.  We can remember what is behind us, but cannot see what is in front of us (or at least we are thought to be crazy if we say we can).

9. All humans die, and we do not know when that will happen.  If we do not die of disease or accident or murder, we die of old age sometime between 110 to 120.  Scientists are looking for cures to diseases, solutions to prevent accidents, and a genetic "cure" for old age that evolution was not able to find.  If we are able to remove all disease, accidents, and old age as causes of death, murder will become the number one cause of death, until we run out of resources due to overcrowding. (God decided in Genesis He would only fight with us for 120 years. In heaven, all of the causes of death will be gone, so we will just live forever. Why was this not possible in the first place?)

10. Because of the uncertainty of our future, and the nature of the humans around us, and our need to feel connected, the writers of the bible "created" God to explain why we act the way we do, and to give future generations some hope for their future, and to make up "rules" for how to get along with each other.  They did this even though they knew they were writing fiction. They chose to die defending that fiction, once again violating the survival of the fittest rules.  Of course, you could decide to believe the writers of the bible were all crazy.  We have been crazy enough to keep reading and believing their fiction for thousands of years.

11. We as "intelligent" beings have been studying the universe and mathematics, trying to get to the point where we can explain and predict everything mathematically, although the "important" things in life still involve our less mathematical emotions.  Recently, a new mathematics has been "discovered", called the mathematics of chaos.  According to this new theory, there are some systems that will never be predictable, no matter how intelligent we get.  We originally thought that if we know all of the starting positions of all of the variables of a system, that we will be able to predict the system once we find the right mathematical model that explains it.  However, there are some systems in which an infinitesimal difference in one starting position of one variable can change the outcome drastically, and some systems where it would take infinite knowledge in order to even know what all of the variables in the system are, and some systems where both of these are true.  This mathematics of chaos has also been called "the butterfly effect", explained by saying that one flap of a butterfly's wings in Central Park may cause the next hurricane to hit Miami.  Earthquakes and weather and cosmic occurences all fall into this category of  "chaotic" systems to a certain degree.  All have been called acts of God.

Now let us assume for a moment that before the big bang, there existed a God who said "Let there be light". The rest of the coincidence above is now explained.

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.  - Albert Einstein


Physicist and "Master of the Universe" Stephen Hawking has a theory of everything.  It is this theory that ties quantum physics (physics at the microscopic level) to Einstein's theory of relativity (physics at the macroscopic level).  According to this theory, we observe 4 dimensional space at a macroscopic level (time is the fourth dimension), but gravity works through 10 or 11 dimensional space at the microscopic level.  The analogy God gave me to use to explain this is God as an artist and we are a two-dimensional painting on a flat table. We only perceive forward, backward, left and right, but not "up (toward the ceiling or heaven)" or "down (toward the floor or hell)".  Quantum physics in this scenario would be like us trying to understand the 3-dimensional sheet of paper we live on. Gravity would be explained by dips in the paper that we could not see. Quantum physics is not able to tell us whether or not other sheets of paper exist. To extend the analogy, the fourth dimension of time would be like individual frames of a movie film.

Rhonda Byrne, author of The Secret, has a theory called the "law of attraction".  She claims it is based on quantum physics, and says that we create our own future by thinking about the future we want (or inadvertently thinking about a future we don't want). This would be like the movie having multiple endings, and we follow the path to the ending we want by looking in the "direction" we want to go in time. Jesus said to keep our eyes on Him, because He is the path to heaven.

Christians have a theory called the rapture. For those of you who don't know what that is, it is the moment that the Church (living and dead) will be taken out of the world.

Scientists are starting to understand that the big bang is more like a balloon being blown up than an explosion. We live on the surface of the balloon, and see the other stars moving away from us as the balloon expands. Using current theories, they can explain history back to a fraction of a second after the big bang. They are still trying to explain that first fraction of a second.  Another recent discovery is that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate (rather than at a constant rate or slowing down).  They are trying to figure out what other forces may be at work to cause this. I think God's paper has a hump in the middle and the paint is flowing downhill.

For those of you who frown at a theory of creation that does not involve seven days, I could say that time from the artist's perspective may be vastly different from time within the painting.  Several passages of the bible support this, saying that a day in heaven is as 1000 years on earth (Psalms 90:4, 2 Peter 3:8).  Or I could tell you that the edge of my Thomas Kincade jigsaw puzzle starts in the middle of a tree, and that a person inside the puzzle would assume the tree continues beyond the edge, with trees on the other side of it.

I copied the following from the internet (look up the world according to Stephen Hawking).  I believe it was Sartre that said "I think therefore I am" (see the nature of reality).  Also, if I wanted to take a shortcut from one side of God's painting to another, He would just have to fold the paper (see travel by wormholes).

The following are excerpts from Stephen Hawking's speech on Oct. 13
On the theory of the universe:
The idea is that we live on the "brane," or surface, of a larger space. The word "brane" […] was introduced by my colleague Paul Townsend to indicate a generalization of the membrane to four dimensions. I suspect that the pun on "brain" was quite deliberate.

[…]Roger Penrose and I showed and predicted that time had a begi ing in the Big Bang and an end in black holes. At these places the general theory of relativity would break down, so one could not use it to predict how the universe began or what would happen to someone who fell in a black hole. The reason general relativity would break down in the Big Bang and black holes is that under normal situations the warping of space-time is very slight and is on comparatively long length scales, so it is not affected by short-range fluctuations. But at the begi ing and end of time, space-time will be scrunched up to a single point. To treat this, we need to combine general relativity – the theory of the very large – with quantum mechanics – the theory of the very small. This would create a theory of everything, and would describe the universe from begi ing to end.

We have been searching for the theory of everything for the last 30 years, and we now think we have a candidate, called M-theory. In fact, M-theory isn't a single theory, but rather a network of theories that all seem basically equivalent.

On the nature of reality:
A theory is just a mathematical model that describes and quantifies the observations. One can ask whether a theory reflects reality, because we have no theory-independent way of determining what is real. Even the everyday objects around us that we regard as obviously real are, in the positivist view, just a model we construct in our minds to interpret the data from our optical and sensory nerves. Maybe we are all linked into a giant computer simulation that sends a signal of pain when we send a motor signal to swing an imaginary foot at an imaginary stone. Maybe we are characters in a computer game played by aliens. To convert, the important point is that we can not say that one description is more real than another, just that it may be more convenient for a particular situation.

On the existence of extra dimensions:
I must admit I have been reluctant to believe in extra dimensions. But the M-theory network fits together so beautifully, and has so many unexpected correspondences, that I feel to ignore it would be like claiming that God put fo ils in the rocks to trick Darwin into believing in evolution. In some theories in the network, space-time acts as yet another indication of the fact that space-time and its dimension are not absolute, theory-independent quantities, but derived concepts that depend on the particular mathematical model.

So how is it that space-time appears four-dimensional to us, but as 10- or 11-dimensional in M-theory? Why don't we observe another six or seven dimensions? The conventional answer to this question – which was generally accepted until recently – was that the extra dimensions were all curled up in a space of small size, leaving four dimensions that are nearly flat. It is like a human hair. If you look at a hair from a distance, it looks like a one-dimensional line, but if you look at it under a magnifying gla you see the thickne and that the hair is really three-dimensional. In the case of space-time, a sufficiently powerful magnifying gla should reveal the curled-up extra dimensions if they exist.

[…]However, there has recently been a more radical suggestion that one or two of the extra dimensions may be much larger or even infinite. Because these large extra dimensions have not been seen in particle accelerators, it is nece ary to suppose that all the particles of matter are confined to a brane or surface in space-time. They would not be free to propagate through the large extra dimensions. Life would have to also be confined to the brane, or we would already have detected large extra dimensions, and the same is true of the nuclear forces between particles.

On travel by wormholes:
The theory of relativity forbids travel faster than the local speed of light. However, the theory does not forbid shortcuts, so one might think one could get quickly to the other side of the galaxy through a wormhole. The trouble is that if such rapid space travel were po ible, it would also be po ible to travel back in time. As we have not seen tourists from the future, it seems that warp drive is not po ible. We have to explore the galaxy the slow way with rockets.

According to Stephen Hawking's theory of everything, time began with the big bang and will end in a black hole.  According to the bible, hell is a pit. According to scientists and the bible, the earth will end in fire, either when the sun becomes a red giant and expands past the orbit of earth in a few billion years, or earlier if God so chooses.  I wonder if we will be able to view this from our seat in heaven, a few billion years from now.

In another speech, Stephen Hawking joked that if a person wanted to take a shortcut through a black hole to the other side of the universe, he should make sure the black hole is large enough, because otherwise he would be shredded into spaghetti.

In his movie Contact (which my husband is downstairs watching on a local Atlanta television station as I type this, coincidentally (if I believed in coincidence)), scientist Carl Sagan speculated that travel through a wormhole in space-time would be like traveling through a tunnel towards a light at the end.  In the movie, the main character travels to her vision of heaven through a wormhole opened up by a particle accelerator.

Scientists at CERN have built a particle accelerator (the Large Hadron Collider) that has the capacity to accelerate electrons 7 times faster than any current particle accelerator can.  They are hoping to find the Higgs boson, which has been nicknamed the God-particle, because it slows down all of the other particles at the moment of their creation to be either protons, electrons, or one of the other particles of matter.  I call it God's paintbrush. When they find it, they will say "Look, this paintbrush created everything, so there is no God". 

The last time man tried to reach God by building a tower to the heavens (called the tower of Babel in Genesis, and called a ziggurat by archaeologists), God scattered us to the corners of the earth and changed our languages so we could not understand each other.

When the LHC was turned on last September, a wire overheated and caused some damage before the scientists shut it down.  They have fixed the damage and plan to turn it back on at half-capacity (still 3.5 times faster than any other machine on earth), as early as November 2009.

There has been some speculation that the machine will open up a black hole for the earth to be sucked into. The scientists have considered this, and feel the chances of this are about the same as a person winning the lottery 3 weeks in a row.  I wonder what the chances of a universe springing into existence and creating me are?

The scientists do admit that the machine is more likely to create "micro-blackholes" that will exist momentarily and close up on themselves.  I hope so, because although I like spaghetti, I don't think I'd like to be spaghetti. I am so glad God has a sieve so I won't fall in. I'll be caught up with Him in His other painting called heaven.

14:23 And he that doubteth is damned if he eat, because [he eateth] not of faith: for whatsoever [is] not of faith is sin.

Romans 14:23

Repent! for the day of the Lord is at hand.

What images does this statement conjure up for you? For many, especially nonbelievers, a Christian who makes this statement is seen as crazy, misguided, mean, hostile, holier-than-thou, hypocritical, or just plain ignorant.  We think of people in the streets with signs marching around.  Many would be surprised to know Christ Himself said it. (Revelation 2:16, I Thessalonians 5:2) 

Some would not care that He said it, since they consider the bible to be fiction anyway. Some people would believe they don't fall into the category of needing to repent, since they have not done anything wrong.  Some people are not worried about the day of the Lord, because it won't happen until the end of time (I wonder when that will be?)

Some people believe "the day of the Lord" is not scientifically possible, so no need to worry about it. But scientists are currently showing things to be possible that would have been considered impossible in the past. Why do you need a scientist to tell you something in order for you to believe it anyway? Scientists themselves are about to create "mini-blackholes" here on earth (possibly as early as this November). Doesn't sound like a good idea to me, even if I don't believe the bible warnings. I'm not worried, though. God is in control. Earthquakes and wars must come to pass, even if I don't understand why.  My next blog posting on coincidence will talk more about the Large Hadron Collider. The scientists built it, so you can believe it is real.  They are trying to figure out what happened to the antimatter and find the God-particle. More on that later in this post.
 
We had a man come on our campus when I was in college and started yelling to everyone who would listen that all Democrats were going to Hell, and that all college students were going to Hell.  Pretty soon he had a very big crowd - not many were agreeing with him. I was going into my (kosher) apartment a quarter of a mile away when I heard the biggest shout from the crowd.  I learned later that he had made the statement that Hitler had the right idea, just the wrong methods.

After he had been arrested, released and came back later that day, and had developed his crowd again, a man who said he was a pastor told the man "You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar."  I later thought of this man when I read the book of Jonah, who (finally) did what God told him to do, which was to tell the people of Nineveh to repent or the Lord would overthrow them in forty days.  Jonah was then disappointed when they repented and God did not overthrow them (he had been looking forward to it, I guess).

There is a popular country song out now that says "Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to go now."  From the images in the video, they use this as an excuse to party and have a good time.  I personally know people who are looking forward to living in heaven (I am).  If you believe in heaven, why don't you want to go now?  None of us is looking forward to the physical death, but do we mourn the grass seed after the grass grows?

Some are looking forward to the rapture (I did not know this term until I joined the Baptist church - it seems to be an evangelical term).  The bible says, however, not to look forward to the day of the Lord, because it will be a terrible day.  Maybe the church will be taken out of the world before it happens, I don't know personally how it will happen (although falling into another dimension is something a few scientists have speculated about). But we still should not wish that terrible day on others either.  Some people use that as an excuse not to believe in God - if He loves us (like the bible says He does), He wouldn't allow such a terrible day to happen (like the bible says it will). Therefore He does not exist.  But it will happen, and we Christians have been told to tell the world (even though we will be hated for telling people they need to love each other or die).

Christians ourselves tend to split ourselves into "liberal" and "conservative" camps. Is it any surprise the nonbelieving world does it, then? Jesus summed it up nicely in Matthew 11:18-19 "For John (the Baptist) came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He hath a devil. The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of pulicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified of her children."

So what is sin? This seems to be where people disagree.  I know people who disassociate themselves with the church and Christ because Christians who are supposed to love everyone will say that people who drink alcohol or are homosexual or don't go to church or don't read their bible are going to Hell. So people start their own churches to say that Jesus loves everyone, so nobody is going to Hell. People like to believe this, because then we don't have to worry about spreading the gospel to the Muslim or Hindu part of the world.  If God loves everyone, then why would He create whole cultures of people who don't believe in Him and then throw them into a Hell that He did not create for them.  It is easier just to believe there is no God.  But then we have no hope for heaven at all.

The bible doesn't say that nobody is going to Hell, so is it fair to start a church to tell people this?  Jesus did die for everyone (including Hitler and the men who flew the airplanes into the buildings on 9/11).  However, if you push Him away, He cannot help you.  If Jesus' love was enough to save the whole world, why did He have to come in the flesh to die on the cross? It was not so you would have a reason to give presents to your children on His birthday, although there is nothing wrong with that. As for the people who have not been told about Him, whose fault is that? Jesus told us to tell everyone about Him. If you refuse to believe in Jesus because you want Him to be fair to the rest of the world, then just maybe it is your responsibility to spread the
Word.  Would you tell a fireman who is pulling you out of your burning house that you refuse to go with him unless he pulls everyone else out first? If you cared about them, you would let him pull you out and then go after them yourself. Thats what evangelical Christians have chosen to do.

It was an Episcopal priest who came on Oprah and essentially agreed with her that it was okay for us to believe we are Gods (not one of my childhood faith's finest hours). On the other hand, it was a Southern Baptist pastor who asked my husband not to come to church on his motorcycle, so my husband stopped going since that was his only transportation at the time. Is believing we are gods a sin? Is riding a motorcycle?  If you read your bible, God will tell you.

One of Satan's biggest lies that many people believe is "I am not a bad person. If God exists, He won't throw me into hell, because that would not be fair."  But how do people who believe this get their definition of fair? Many would say they follow the Golden Rule.  But that rule came from the bible. Can we pick and choose which parts of the bible we agree with and which parts we disagree with?  The bible says homosexuality is a sin. It says to stay sober. It says to go to church. It says to read your bible. It says to love everyone. It says there is a heaven. It says there is a hell. Which parts do you believe?

So again, what is sin? People like to say that if nobody else is getting hurt, then it is not a sin.  They don't consider that they are hurting God Himself. Sin is anything that stands between you and God.  

If getting drunk on a Friday night is more important to you than loving your God who gave his life for you, that is a sin.  If having sex with a person who is not your spouse is more important to you than loving your God (or your spouse), that is a sin. If sleeping late on Sunday (or Saturday or Wednesday or whichever day your church meets) is more important to you than gathering with your brothers and sisters in Christ, that is a sin.  If watching David Letterman is more important to you than learning what your God wants to tell you, that is a sin. The good news is that these are not unforgivable sins. You do have to repent though. We all know that saying you are sorry means nothing if you are not really sorry.

If God is all-powerful and all-loving, why is there sin in the world? If God has the power to make us live forever, why do we die? Why not take us all to heaven now?  Well, for one thing, if we all go to heaven without loving everybody else first, then heaven will pretty much be the same as earth, with the same problems it has now. Can you think of anyone you have not loved? You won't be allowed into heaven without loving the people that God loves. Do you know who that is? Maybe God hasn't taken us all to heaven yet because He is still saving people.

I have said in previous postings that in order to get to heaven, we will need to hold the hand of the one who is there.  In order to do that, we have to 1) believe the hand exists, 2) believe it wants to hold ours, 3) believe we need to hold it.  The fourth thing that must be true is that we need to be able to hold it.  God is not able to be near sin. Before Jesus came, Rabbis had to be completely washed of sin before attempting to come near the holy place. When anyone touched the ark of the covenant, they died instantly. God had to send Jesus in the flesh so He could associate with sinners and publicans.  God is able to wash the sin from your life. He already has, with the blood of His precious son. You just have to believe.

Some will say this is all a bunch of malarky.  Some will say my use of the word malarky shows that I am just silly and ignorant. Why? Scientists have "proven" that in order to create matter, according to quantum physics, an equal amount of antimatter must be created at the same time.  Antimatter is (almost) the same thing as matter, only with opposite positive and negative charges.  When matter and antimatter come into contact with each other, they annihilate each other.  Antimatter has been nicknamed matter's evil twin, although there is nothing inherently "evil" about it.  The problem is that scientists have not been able to find all of the antimatter that must have been created at the moment the universe began. So they speculate that it deteriorates faster than matter does.  What if we are the antimatter? What if the "real" universe is wherever the "real" matter went. What if we can't see or touch God because we will be annihilated if we do?  Is it really malarky to believe that it is our sin that keeps us out of heaven? Why do you believe me when I say the scientists have proven antimatter is real even though they can't find it, but don't believe me when I say the bible is true even though we can't see God? Just a thought.

My new favorite chapter in the bible (because it is the one I just read, tomorrow it will be a different one) is II Timothy chapter 3. I dare you to read it. :-)

Thanks for reading.

God answered a question this week that I have had for years - "Do my Jewish friends from college (for whom I have alot of respect) know God - is He leading them the way He wants them to go?" Before I get to His answer (Romans chapter 11 for those who want to read ahead), some explanation.

I have been asked "Is Jesus God, or His Son?" The answer of course is yes.  If this question is asked in the spirit of wanting to learn how that is possible, then my answer is that His flesh was human, His spirit was God.  If I paint myself into my living picture (see God is Real), people will look at it and say, that's Margo. But the paint is not me.  If the question is asked in the spirit of trying to make the believer look stupid (because obviously science is "right", which must mean the bible is "wrong"), then the only answer is the one Jesus Himself gave to those who were trying to do the same to Him:  "I and my Father are one" (John 10:30), at which point they tried to kill Him for blasphemy (John 10:31-33)

Alot of people think of God in the Old Testament as the "eye for an eye" God, (which actually means only one eye for one eye instead of two eyes for one eye, which is how people tend to overreact when they are wronged). They think of Him as the God who sends people to Hell for worshipping golden calves instead of Him. People think that God somehow changed in the New Testament, which is totally illogical - if you believe in God you must believe He is eternal.  He did realize that His anger and the law were not working to make people love each other (He actually knew it wouldn't, but He needed to show us that we need His forgiveness before we could be forgiven), but that is the extent of His "change" (Isaiah 12:1). So, He made a new covenant with believers, which He said He would do in the Old Testament (Jeremiah 31:31).

It is impossible to believe the New Testament without believing the Old Testament.  Why? Because Jesus took all of His authority from the Old Testament. He fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament.  He did not come to start a new religion.  He said so Himself: Matthew 5:17-18: Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.  It is illogical to believe Jesus was a great prophet (which is what some people believe who believe Jesus was a great man but not God), and not believe everything He said.

It is also difficult to believe the Old Testament, which said "The Messiah is coming and will be a light unto the Gentiles" (Isaiah), and even told where and when He would come (I learned that from a Jewish website that tried to explain that King Herod Agrippa was the Messiah predicted in the bible, not Jesus), and then not believe the New Testament, which says "The Messiah came and Jesus is a light unto the Gentiles" (a known fact for we Jews and Gentiles who believe).  It is possible that the Jewish Torah is written differently from the Christian Old Testament, but where I have checked (which admittedly is not much), they have been similar enough to me. 

I have read where today's Jews believe that God will reveal to us Gentiles that they are right. They don't realize He already has.  They also don't believe Jesus was their Messiah, because they believe He would have shown them if He was.  But the decendants of the Jews who believed during Jesus' time are now called Christian.  We "Gentiles" could be direct decendants of Jacob by lineage without realizing it.

I spent 2 years of college living in a kosher apartment. Three Jewish friends of mine needed a fourth willing to keep the apartment kosher. I went home and ate at Pizza Hut with my parents and brother every weekend. I was not very knowledgeable about the bible at the time.  I just believed we are all God's children, so I should not judge myself to be better than anyone else.

We had to keep two sets of silverware - one for meat and one for dairy, which we had to wash separately.  They told me this was because of the verse in the bible that says not to cook a calf in the milk of its mother.  Leviticus chapter 11 lists types of meat we should not eat, most of which Christians today do not eat (vultures, bats, eagles, grasshoppers, etc.).  I later learned that many of the things on the list, including swine and shellfish, are bottomfeeders - animals that eat the leftovers and waste of other animals, which would be a good reason not to eat them during the days of Moses. 

Right now, I tell my children to eat their vegetables because they are good for them.  When they are older, it will still be a good idea for them to eat their vegetables, but my relationship with them will not depend on it.

I knew that my friends were not supposed to work on Saturday, but did not realize to the extent that one of my friends took that (as do some other Jewish people), until I stayed on campus one Saturday.  My friend came out of the hall where the bathroom was and stood silently until we noticed her.  My other friends told me someone must have turned off the bathroom light. She was not allowed to flip the light switch, and not allowed to ask anyone else, even non-Jews, to do the work for her. 

Whereas I could see the logic in that, I still did not feel God would punish me or anyone else for flipping a light switch. But the New Testament actually says that anything someone believes is a sin, is for them. And we are to respect the Jewish faith as our mother religion, and respect the beliefs of those who believe that their salvation depends on what they eat. Romans 14:2: For one believeth that he may eat all things, another, who is weak, eateth herbs., Romans 14:20-21: For meat destroy not the work of God. All things indeed are pure; but it is evil for that man who eateth with offence. It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak.

I learned from my friends that some Jews believe in an afterlife, but that is not the focus of their religion. They are more concerned with pleasing God in this life. The Jewish website I refer to above said that there are 619 (I think that is the right number) rules a Jew needs to follow.  To them, behavior is what matters, not belief.  A Jew who breaks one of the 619 rules needs to make atonement (they do realize that they sin). According to the bible, atonement is made by sacrificing a lamb or goat or pigeon, or whatever the situation calls for. The animal must be "without blemish", so you cannot just kill the goat that is not worth anything anyway. The Rabbi puts the sins of the people on the scapegoat, and sends it into the wilderness (Leviticus 16:20-27).

I also learned the story of Passover from my friends, which is a very important holiday for them.  I knew that the Last Supper was a Passover sader (feast to start the holiday), but had never been taught about the significance of that.
 
It was God who showed me the significance when I started reading my bible for myself, as I read the story of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis.  I realized that my entire Christian life I had heard Jesus referred to as God's lamb, but always thought that referred to Him being meek, or to God being our shepherd, or to the fact He was born in a manger.

While all of those are true, the real significance, God showed me finally, is that He is the ram that God supplied in place of Isaac.  Because Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son of promise, his only son, whom he loved dearly, God did not require him to, because He now knew that we were worth the sacrifice of His son of promise, His only son, whom He loves dearly. (Genesis chapter 22). Jesus is our lamb, "without blemish".

During Passover, the Jewish people had to put the blood of the lamb over their doors at night to keep the death angel from taking their first-born. Presumably, if a Jew did not believe he needed to do that, then he probably didn't, and presumably the first-born of that household was taken along with the first-born of all the non-Jewish households.  In this instance, belief, not behavior, was the key to salvation. If a person does not apply the blood of the Passover lamb (Jesus) to his door, the death angel will not pass over him.

All of this left me still with the dilemma - is my Jewish friend, who did her best to please God in this life, but He still took her at the age of 34, in heaven now?  If all of the Jews during Jesus time had believed Him, He would not have been crucified, which He knew needed to happen.  Are those who crucified Him in heaven or Hell? A true Christian realizes that it was for us that He was crucified - it was our fault. He did it to bring us to the realization that we CAN all get along with each other, if we all admit we are wrong. And to pay the price of death required for our sins. And to give us hope that there is a heaven where we can live together peaceably with Him and each other. He did it so that we will search for and find His hand, so that we can get to heaven where He is.

What about God's first covenant with the Jews - is it binding even if they don't believe in the new one, if they do their best not to break it?  What if they do break it - can God?  I would be angry if someone told me they loved me, but not my son, but what if they had never been properly told that I have a son?

God finally gave me an answer this week, in Romans Chapters 10 and 11. Chapter 10: 1-2 Brethren my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved. For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.  

Romans Chapter 11: Verse 2 - God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew. Verse 4 - But what saith the answer of God unto him? I have reserved unto myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal.  Verse 7 - What then? Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for; but the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded.  Verse 9-12 - and David saith, Let their table be made a snare, and a trap, and a stumblingblock, and a recompense to them. Let their eyes be darkened, that they may not see.  I say, then, Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid: but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles. Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them be the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness? Verse 15: For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall be the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?  Verse 19-21 - Thou wilt say then, The branches were broken off, that I might be graffed in. Well; because of unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be not high-minded but fear: For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee.  Verse 23 - And they also, if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be graffed in: for God is able to graff them in again. 

And finally, for my sake, Romans 11:25-31 - For I would not, brethren, than ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.  And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins. As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers' sakes. For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. For as ye in times past have not believed God, yet have now obtained mercy through their unbelief: Even so have these also now not believed, that through your mercy they also may obtain mercy.

Dear Lord, it is in part because of the unbelief of my Jewish friends that I searched for and found you.  I pray now that you save them likewise. Amen.