Tag: god

The Answer

It was once a radical monism: there was one God and He was responsible for everything. “I create the weal and the woe,” He says in Isaiah. He was a one stop shop. So is Deuteronomy: “The LORD our God is One.” After that, it appears to come that there was a Satan who was a minor functionary in God’s court: simply, the Accuser, who still took orders from that God Most High. This is how he is depicted in the Book of Job. He does nothing without God’s approval. But by the time we get to the days of Jesus, the Christ, then Satan had become the prince of demons, who is described to have fallen from Heaven like lightning. And he’s stayed there until present day, waiting for us to think on the situation: it was here that I wondered about the problem of evil, and the problem of pain.

The problem of evil was actually pretty simple, if it did not contain the problem of pain. It consists of a simple question, why is there evil in the world? And if you do not count the problem of pain, it can be answered almost trivially, because God grants free will to his creations, and it is their responsibility to choose well, and some do not. But the problem of pain, which is to ask why there is pain in the world: if we include natural disasters and such, that cannot be solved by the wills of His creations, can it? The considering of it, it comes down to power. We generally believe that disasters are “acts of God”, basically—surely the Devil hath not such fury. Can he? How do we think on divine terms? If we look up into the night sky, while out in the rural plains, we can see in the expanse of stars a hint of the true glory of God. What if the power we once thought God to have—what most of us think right now think of God having, based on the story of Exodus and such—what if that is actually the scope of power of an archangel, and the power that God can conceivably wield is well beyond what our knowledge can reach?

It is to introduce a radical dualism, then. We introduce a very basic premise: what if Lucifer invented pain? What if all that has ever gone wrong, anywhere, what if all of it (ultimately) came from the Devil? Because now, if we have an Evil of cosmic scope, doing his utmost to create havoc and such, couldn’t this be so? To put it simply, if we think things through, none of it came from God. Surely, God will make use of it, just like nature makes use of excrement as plant fertilizer, but recall your last dose of pain: odds are, it was an ugly feeling; if you think about it, it makes sense that God didn’t think that stuff up. Its semblance… brutishly rough is its aesthetic, as if it were invented without that certain skill: pain is a stab of wrong.

It can be therefore solved, how it is that God is all good while there is evil in the world: at every level, there is at its ultimate source a creature of His at fault, great or small, one or more who are where the buck stops at the causational chain of pain; if there is merely the barest of conscious choice that became something whose pain held some significance. Or perhaps that some pain that came from a previous pain, for it oft begets some more of it. All its source, however, is an ill-applied exercise of free will, for in the days primordial, one imagines a Heaven where literally anything was possible, even the first evil, the first sin, the first of pain. Born, in its preliminary stages, all of what is wrong with the world.

Now, why does God let it happen, still? We do not comprehend the patience of the Most High: this is what is meant by a thousand years being like a day to Him. It is not that time flies by at a quicker pace to His observation. Quite the opposite, that he can see of a greater scope of all that happens, just that His patience carries Him through all of it. If you yourself had patience, you would see. Why did not Jesus Christ, the Son of God, not rid us of all the problems in the world? Don’t you see? It’s part of His plan that things happen as they do. Why would Jesus make of things against that plan? Why does God allow evil to continue? There will be a day of reckoning. That day will come like a thief in the night, when we have long stopped looking for it to show. Hearken. He yet in patience watches.



If you like what’s written here, check out my book, Memoirs from the War in Heaven.

Lucifer, Descending

I remember way back, when there was this time that for some reason, I thought that I was Lucifer Morningstar, God’s brightest angel. The twist, though, was that I was fallen from an evil God (of Gnostic myth), or that I was a version of Lucifer that never had fallen. The Gnostic one you probably never heard of, it was when Sabaoth rebelled against the Archons—the governing entities of the world—and Samael, the blind god, who was supposed to be the God of the Old Testament (but not the New). Blasphemy, that was, if you know your Bible and Christian canon; probably why there are so few Gnostics these days. Anyway, I wrote in the margins of the book where I read this, “the true Lucifer Morningstar”. That figure, though, I thought fit better with Jim Morrison, of all people. He always had a sort of “Lucifer” vibe to him.

So basically, I just thought I was hot stuff. It was actually a step down from where my working area was then, namely, that I was the (new) messiah. The answer man. Around that time, I was waiting for my “superpowers” to kick in, whereupon I was going to hover in the air above New York City, holding an electric guitar (which presumably amplified itself), and thrash some tunes out better that Jimi Hendrix ever played. And then I would disappear. That’s all I had planned. It wasn’t a very well thought out messiahood. Oh, I did also have this dream that world leaders would come to me to seek my advice for really important matters. So really, I wouldn’t have needed the hypercharge of power that an omnipotent entity would have. Power was not really what I wanted. So the higher-ups, I think this is what happened, made me comfortable in something a little (a lot) less powerful. And yes, I did feel rather at home in the role of Lucifer Morningstar. It was the top of the food chain, because what is above you just blows out any notion of scale.

Now there was this one time where I saw the spirits of people gathered in a sort of torso of mine, like what you see in the painting, Garden of Earthly Delights, near the center of the third panel, the Tree Man. Then I saw myself have an angelic spiritual form, circling above them, looking down on all the lower realities, each with their version of what happened anywhere they were aware of. I said to them, “I am Lucifer Morningstar, and I speak to you from the most high reality, and the most high God, where there was no Fall.” I tried that tactic, in fact, several times—it never worked out; where there was a Lucifer, there was a Fall. This was indeed a sign. What I didn’t know then about those “realities” was that the actual Lucifer was looking through them, seeing which one to choose to solidify, from his perch in the original Heaven. And of the “realities” only one became the One when he decided to commit his full forward evil to it.

And another thing: whenever I thought I was Lucifer, there was always a Michael. In the longest stretch of that belief, when I was the hypergenius Lucifer Morningstar, there was Albert Einstein who was Michael—and no matter what I did, I could see that I could not get past him, that he would ultimately defeat whatever I could muster. Indeed, it seemed by all counts to be intrinsic to the system that is the universe. And back then, you know, I always thought that I was one of the good guys, but maybe it could be true: I got caught up in the lies of him who deceiveth the whole world: the Dragon, the Serpent, Satan, the Devil. Who was once Lucifer, the greatest being in the whole of creation. Now the Father of Lies, who was a murderer from the first. I don’t remember exactly what it was that made me think that I was him, if unfallen. I recall that I certainly didn’t want to be Michael, the secondmost. I thought Michael lost the War in Heaven, and I didn’t want to be left out of all the stuff that was coming to me in Paradise.

Around that time, I remember curling up naked on the carpet, living in my head this one of several times, when the War took me over; I remember a voice that booming repeated, which I could have sworn was Walt Disney’s voice (because as you know, Walt Disney is God): “Michael… Michael… Michael…”: calling to me, like the sound of doom… Somehow I switched, the next step in my progression in powering down. Perhaps it had been all the psychological experiences I encountered when I identified with Lucifer, that it could never be what I had wanted it to be, since the Fall was written in the ground of reality itself. And I was then Michael. Of course, there was still a problem with this conception of things, as angels are not human beings and human beings are not angels—in fact, human beings do not become angels when they die and go to Heaven (a common fallacy). It was just a gradual talking me down, I suppose you could say, for I had once thought I was God, and Jesus, and then a separate messiah from Jesus, then Lucifer. I only had a couple steps to go.

Long story short, by turning me into Michael, the higher ups were curing me of my messiah complex. Michael is a faithful and humble servant of the Lord, whatever power he possessed. And from there to be a prophet, who of course is of the correct species of mine. And pretty much that’s it, since I am a prophet. But those days as Lucifer taught me a few things. Being called Lucifer in real life carries with it a sting, which I hadn’t counted on, because you’re dealing with the outside world, now—and Lucifer is not one of the good guys in that world. Nice in concept, horrible in practice. Also, if Lucifer is the good guy, and God is the bad guy, you cannot explain much of the world or the universe. It just doesn’t make sense. And lastly, it’s better to be second and saved, than one who cries, “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.” No, just no. It’s better to serve in Heaven.

Lucifer has been glamorized, and it is understandable why. Being the being with the greatest of powers, he nonetheless is the underdog when he rebels against God Most High. Teenagers, especially, can relate: how it is that those in power (like the parents) just don’t understand, and the higher ups should listen to them for a change. But being like how teenagers have just enough knowledge to be dangerous, Lucifer was blinded by his pride. It was no glamorous thing that he did. Simply put, every bad thing that has happened, and happened to you, is due to Lucifer Morningstar, greatest and stupidest of all the angels, who actually broke part Heaven in inventing his magnum opus, which happened to be…? Well, what is the worst possible thing? Wouldn’t that be… pain? Also known as error, and most commonly, Sin. Then there would be Death, after Lucifer sexing it up with Sin: Death, the Son of Satan. Because they were embodiments, Sin, Death, and now Lucifer: Evil.

This is why true Satanism has no redeeming qualities to it. There was nothing noble in rebelling against a God who was truly all good. We look around here, on earth, and we can point to things that are unfair about the world, and we’re like, how about these, God? And then I tell you, those things are all Lucifer’s fault, to the least discomfort. God has never done you wrong, or anybody. That’s the Devil you’re thinking of. He does it to you and then blames God for it, then says to follow him down into his morass of iniquity. Remember, as it is written in Revelation, he deceiveth the whole world. How did the Rolling Stones song start? “Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and taste.” That’s the picture he would like you to have of him. The reality is that to behold the true being that is Satan would probably make you wretch, or worse.

And anyone who thinks doing evil is fun, that one would go out of one’s way to harm someone else for no reason, for evil’s sake—all I have to say is that I don’t understand you. There were times in the past where I wanted to get even with someone, to do damage back to its source, but to proactively do harm I have rarely desired, going back to childhood for instances. I grew up. Once I thought that evil was just a form of immaturity, but the levels that some people take it to outstrip the worst of what immaturity can explain. The immature stop bitching when they get what they want, but evil is insatiable. So go ahead, joke about it: be the Devil’s advocate, call him Lord Satan, sing along to heavy metal songs about worshipping Evil itself. I tell you from our end, Jesus understands (he gets you!), and that you know not what you do. But know this: the real deal is nothing to laugh at, and nothing to give your allegiance to. Do not make friends with Death—and expect not to die.



If you like what’s written here, check out my book, Memoirs from the War in Heaven.

The Origin of Night

The story? Let us say God is all that. All good, all wise, all patient, all merciful, not lacking in any perception. What would it be, what could Lucifer have possibly done that he would be forever removed from the light of Eternity? Can we suppose, should we believe that he knew what he was doing, that he knew he was going five steps too far? In a perfect world, what could he have possibly done to bring upon himself the wrath of God? “Perfect”: that’s the clue. What could Lucifer have done? Perhaps actually to create the very concept of “wrong”? Before his doing so, all there was—anywhere—was perfection. No one ever made any sort of mistake anywhere that there were beings to make them. There was no such thing. This was his “genius”. With it, he tried to overpower God Himself. For all he had to do was to make the Lord make one mistake… But after temptations of pleasure and of pain, our man Jesus Christ said at his last, “It is finished,” for indeed, his whole life had then been led without any error whatsoever.

What Lucifer did was to sin, for the first time anyone ever in the history of Heaven and Earth even had the thought to. And Sin, his emanation, goes by other names, from the analytic name “Error” to one that is near and dear to all of us, I’m sure: Pain. Which is to say that God was not the one who thought that up… Lucifer had enough power to do this all by himself. Now, God put it to good use, a good example that it has had great utility in the process of evolution—but no, the first instance of it did not go as far back as the Most High. And Sin, the curse that it was, spawned from Evil himself, spread from the first like an insidious fire, so that everyone—all but One, were subject to it. Even the angels would from then on sin, and this is outside of all the “rebel” angels, Lucifer’s angels: they now to be called the Devil and his demons.

Can you imagine a world without pain? For it was thus at the beginning, and it shall be again at the end (see the finish of the Book of Revelation). Do you understand that Error is Sin is Pain? Or maybe the word we used at first that says all three are what you may comprehend of what Lucifer made: the Wrong. It was his to do, surely, for perhaps no one but him could have thought of something so “novel”, and it required stretching of the mind to conceive of it, and it required effort like nothing else to commit the first fault—anywhere. And then this was a breach in the Godhead. It threatened existence itself. For we are talking about stakes where pain—the idea of pain—were invented by one created: something that fundamental and pervasive. For pain, even the idea of it: before it were made, it was an impossible thing.

To which one might conceive, that if the whole of the universe were one grand story, could it be that all the best subplots are ones not where nothing goes wrong, but ones where we overcome obstacles—stories where there are bad things in them too? True, these of struggle may be intrinsic to the nature of creation and that is why we would see things this way, and one might imagine a physics where the best story that could be told is one where nothing goes wrong. But this universe is all we’ve got—might we find that truly, this one is all we need to make the best of all possible worlds? Like it were all on purpose! Does the best story necessarily win, in other words? Ours to follow in that path of struggle, to know that it all goes to have some meaning: this is surely God’s ultimate gift to us, what He made of the pain, that nothing is wasted.

This is not a setup. Even predestination is not so simplistic, so simple-minded as that. The meaning we have, that given us and that which we make—if this is just a chess game where we set the pieces up to systematically knock them down, we have then as much meaning as a chess game. We would be poor players indeed. Know this: Lucifer had his chance, had a real chance to repent of his wrongs. They we not simply token offerings of forgiveness for the clearing of our conscience, for the sake of the story. Thus it is with anyone who ends up being damned: they had a real chance not to go down the path they did, and they did not take it. If they didn’t have that chance, and were damned anyway, we to indict them would be the worse side of evil, and we would surely all be lost.

And God can forgive many things. If Lucifer had turned back, after committing that heinous first error, indeed how different things would have been. But the pride that made him think he could outdo the Most High, this pride was not satisfied with merely the opening salvo of the War: he was bent on seeing it through, a furious obsession that became the more inflamed with every defeat. At every step, he would attempt the worse, thus the evil knew deeper lows. And the Dragon also threw down a third of the stars with his tail: a third of the billions of angels fell with him. This was part and parcel of that evil. These angels’ lives we lost by him. Sympathy for the Devil? He surely has my sympathy, that justice so harsh will be done on him, but he has the least of that sympathy. More goes to the least of the angels who fell, than ones who caused said fall.

It was that I saw Satan and his angels fall from Heaven like the ground of the place dropped out from beneath them, out of sight. He made himself out to be darkness itself, but all he did was block the light so that there would be shadow. God answered the darkness with the origin of night. And I saw Satan full of wrath when he landed in the Earth, for he knew his time was short. What if the story were just as real as the pain we go through? And what we do on this world ultimately has import, has gravity, for we are caught up in that story… God Himself came down here because it required His personal attention. This is our only world, this our only life we live: so now, will you not do something? If perhaps nothing else, to pray? Let it not be to watch it all go by, and not having lived, lament the dream not followed…

You are a human being alive on this green Earth: while you are alive, while it is still green: will you not seize the day, will you not do something so easy and impossible as love? And what can you love? Think of this: you can thank God for the pain you have experienced in your life. Decide to do that. You will then be forgiven for the pain you yourself have caused. (Pain is a saint’s excuse to be thankful.) And so, we fight the good fight, and defeat Satan at the first, and then even the last and worst of his evils. All you have to know is this: don’t give up. There is always hope: believe this, and it will be true. The Devil started with everything and threw it all away because of his pride. Be happy with nothing, instead. Do you not know? The Man Upstairs made the stars above for us, the ground below. All He wants from us is to stand and look up, and to feel small, and to be amazed. For that is what it means to be a child of God.

And that’s how the story goes, right up to your doorstep. Go.



If you like what’s written here, check out my book, Memoirs from the War in Heaven.