

Perfection

Perfection

Published by Steve Copland at Smashwords

Copyright 2011 by Steve Copland

Cover Photograph "Reach" by Donald Boyd, New Zealand

All rights reserved solely by the author. The author guarantees all contents are original and do not infringe upon the legal rights of any other person or work. The author expressly allows the copying of this book for the purposes of helping people to come to know perfection.

All Biblical quotes are taken from the New International Version.

Chapter One

Limitations

The 'fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom', but love is the perfection of it.

The Author

What is Perfection?

A little boy is playing on the beach. He scoops handfuls of sand into a plastic container, pats it down, holds his hand over the top and quickly flips it up-side-down. Very carefully, he lifts the container off the packed sand and sits back to see the result. A piece of sand has stuck to the container and there's a broken corner on his sandcastle. Frustrated, he knocks it down, flattens the sand and starts again.

A girl is picking wild flowers to take to her mother. She holds the stems and inspects the petals. This one is out of shape, that one has been partially eaten by an insect, another has a brown spot. She rejects them all until she finds that one which looks perfect. She picks it, a smile on her face as she runs to her mother and offers the gift.

A guy is cleaning his car. He isn't religious in any way. Indeed, if I asked him his opinion about spiritual perfection he would likely tell me he never thinks about it. He soaps up the car, rinses it off, dries it with another cloth and steps back for a look. He walks around the vehicle searching for a spot he may have missed. Finding one, he rubs and rubs until it's gone. Then he gets his wax and does the whole 'wax on, wax off' thing until that car is shining like a new one.

A teenage girl is choosing a pair of shoes. Her boyfriend is sitting on a chair in the shop trying to look interested and wondering how on earth she knows which ones look better or worse 'cos they all look much the same to him. She stands in front of the mirror; she turns, lifts her foot and puts it down. She looks to him for an opinion and he nods encouragingly. As far as he's concerned she looks good in any of them. However, she pulls them off, takes them back to the shelf and tries another pair.

A young man stayed at my apartment the night before his wedding. The next morning he got up early and went for a hair cut. On his return he dressed for the wedding. New, white, pristine shirt, black bowtie, dark suit and immaculately polished shoes. After everything was on, he stood in front of the mirror trying to get a disobedient lock of hair to sit in the place he truly believed it should be. He patted, he coaxed and fiddled with it for several minutes, combing and combing. When he was done, it looked exactly the same to me; I couldn't see the difference at all, but he did.

All over the world, every day, people strive for perfection. We may not even be aware of it. We are renovating the house; spending hours pouring through wallpaper books, color charts and trying to imagine what that perfect room would look like. We are buying vegetables at the supermarket. We grope our way through tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots and cabbages, discarding anything which appears to have a flaw. We are shopping for new clothes. Hundreds of racks of different brands that are there because someone will buy them, but we have a specific idea of what looks best on us and we seek it out, try it on and reject it, unless we are convinced that it completes the image we desire to create about ourselves.

There is no doubt in my mind that humanity has an inbuilt desire for perfection which is manifested in many areas of our lives. But what is perfection, and can we ever hope to experience it as a permanent companion?

Imagine, for example, perfect knowledge, knowing all things. Imagine being able to understand perfectly the dynamics of quantum physics as though it were a kindergarten class, or to know every minute function of every cell within the human body as simply as understanding a child's jigsaw puzzle; to know the names of every star ever formed, or the movements of every ant in every place in the world at the same time, or how many liters were in the oceans at any given moment, and to know the actions, emotions, choices and destinies of every person ever born or to be born. These few examples force us to recognize our human limitations.

And how would we imagine perfect power? We can imagine having incredible strength, we can imagine having a powerful mind, but what would perfect power mean? Whenever we think of such a thing we are forced to begin with something outside of ourselves and admit that we are essentially pretty powerless beings. We can create nuclear bombs. Wow! Does that make us powerful? Compared to fish and potatoes we are powerful creatures. But hey, the sun emits more energy in one second than all of the energy produced by humanity in our entire history, including all of the nuclear weapons we currently have in stock. Who could create such a thing, millions of such things? A being of perfect power could create our universe as easily as if He was making a pot of soup. Perfect power! I cannot even begin to get my mind around such a concept.

People use the word 'perfection' to mean something which may not be perfect at all. In fact, every day we demonstrate our limitations in the way we speak of perfection. When a child is born we say 'a perfect baby boy or girl', when we ask for a cup of tea or coffee to be made a certain way we may say 'it's perfect', and when we see an athlete or performer give an incredible show we may say they have perfected their specialty. Then the child grows, it throws a tantrum, the tea gets cold, the dancer trips and the athlete misses his timing, and we know that what we were witnessing is not perfection at all, but rather people being what we are, limited creations trying to do our best.

If we are honest, it seems almost impossible for us to imagine perfection because we are trying to imagine something that, left to ourselves, is impossible for us to be. If we look up and compare ourselves to a being of absolute perfection, the one many call God, our limitations become obvious, therefore, we lower the bar, we bring perfection down to manageable levels and compare ourselves to less advanced life forms or other human beings. And yet, despite the impossibility of us ever reaching anything like perfect knowledge or power, something drives us to head in that direction. In fact, we seem to be almost obsessed with perfection. It is as though something within us beckons us upward, calls us to be more than earthbound creatures.

All around us we try to create images of perfection. Take advertising as an example. Glamorous pictures of beautiful women, airbrushed, flawless, the work of the creative designer using computer programs to eliminate that which we perceive as imperfections. The nose is too big, the eyes too narrow, the mouth needs to be fuller! How about a nip and a tuck, a few lumps of silicon, and while we're at it, remove the moles, the scars, that weird birthmark, and get those teeth straightened and whitened. The cosmetics, fashion, beauty treatments and cosmetic surgery industries can testify to our obsession with trying to look perfect.

And what of those photos of gorgeous tropical islands; aqua blue waters, palm trees waving gently in a warm breeze, golden sands on deserted beaches? As a commercial photographer in the eighties I would spend hours waiting for that "perfect moment", my lens fitted with various filters to make the sea more blue, the perfect light to make the sand look like liquid gold, all to convince the holiday seeker that here was paradise on earth. And the resort for the naturalist, those folk who want to run around in their birthday suit and do the whole Adam and Eve thing. All is well until some half-starved mosquito vampire decides that your backside would make a good meal.

We get tired of reality. We get tired of constant disappointment of how things really are, tired of bad news and natural disasters, tired of toothache and bee stings, the common cold and wet feet on a winter's day, our partner's bad habits and trying to hide our own; tired of having to pack the one-piece and leave the bikini at home 'cos the 'wonder diet' made us so hungry we gained five pounds, and tired of those doom and gloom, apocalyptic, end of the world guys who seem to be everywhere these days. How about some perfection for a change...just a taste, at least on my annual holiday!

We live our lives wanting to feel, to experience that which seems beyond ourselves. There is a drive within us to go higher, deeper, to experience what we can almost imagine could be. We want to play the perfect game of golf, to be way under par. But what would a perfect game mean; 18 hole-in-ones? We strive for better, indeed, we seem to be driven to go faster, hit longer, and look better.

The Bible says we are 'made in the image of God'. We could translate that as 'made in the image of the manifestation of perfection'. Is it the 'image' - whatever that means - the image of perfection which drives us towards the origin of that image? Is there somewhere within us, something of the perfection of our Creator, something which we feel is more than a mere reflection, rather more like a calling? Do we sometimes hear that call, a mysterious intangible hand that reaches out to us to go beyond and above?

We are sitting on a rock as the sun is going down. There are no sounds of humanity, no traffic, no planes, no father screaming for the kids to pack up their sand buckets and get into the car after wiping their feet. In that brief, beautiful moment we imagine that we hear an inaudible call, feel an invisible force. But the sound disappears just at that moment when we think we may understand what it is, and the force seems to have no definite direction. We thought for a moment that we could almost reach out and touch perfection, we sensed something. We felt the warmth of the setting sun and the joy of life, we sensed the vibrations in the sand as the waves rolled in and, as we stared at the light before us, we had this crazy idea we could walk out along the golden path on the sea towards it. We almost get up and start towards the waves, but that instinct within reminds us that human beings don't generally walk on water, so we stay rooted to our rock. And then the sun sets, we pick up our sandals, head back to the car, and find the kids have left half the beach on the back seat.

Why do we have this passion to find that which seems impossible for us? So few people live in contentment, even less would say they are completely satisfied with life all of the time. When we are teenagers we dream of the future. It seems we will live forever and have the time to fulfill every desire. In our twenties the bite of reality begins to tear the fabric of our dreams; in our thirties we are looking forward with less expectation and beginning to look back to find the point at which we took the wrong path. At forty to fifty we make some desperate last attempts at realizing dreams we have compromised with, and after that we simply become resigned to the fact that we were just silly young dreamers.

The paradox of perfection is like a constant, invisible, inquisitor who judges us and our every move. We create movies about that which is beyond ourselves; movies like Superman. But we always feel the need to add that flaw, that weakness, the green kryptonite of our own imperfection is written into all that we create. Superman is powerful, but would it be possible for us to create a character that possessed perfect power? If we are honest, we cannot even imagine such a thing, and yet we cannot stop trying to.

And what of perfect love, perfect justice or perfect holiness? Perhaps it is easier for most of us to believe that we are products of evolution and, if humanity survives, in a million years time our descendents will have realized what we sense is possible but infinitely out of reach. Surely that's a cop-out, for there is another side to this seemingly depressing scenario. Let's call it 'hope' or perhaps even 'faith' would suffice. Great words, but there is one even greater than these, that word we know as 'love'. In terms of understanding the possibilities of human perfection, love stands apart, for love is immeasurable, and, is written into the very core of who we are, if indeed we are 'made in the image of God'. When it comes to love, perfection is tangible and even reachable, even if only for brief moments.

Have you ever tasted or experienced a thought or feeling which could only be described as perfect? If you have ever had a moment of absolutely unselfish love towards another person, then you will know what I am speaking of. It may have been your first love, it may have been when you were tickling your giggling child, or it may have been an overwhelming sense of compassion for someone. For all our flaws, we humans have an ability to feel a depth of love which cannot be measured, if only for a short time. These are the moments when the 'image of God' reflects through us, for we only experience 'perfect' love through that form of love which is pure, the love that is selfless, the love that flows from us, rather than the affection we so often seek to fill our emptiness.

So why is it so difficult for us to even get a taste of that illusive perfection which pulls us like metal to a magnet? We are all broken creatures, imperfect creatures. We search for ways to mend the brokenness, to fill the emptiness; desperately trying to feel what we instinctively sense is possible. The truth is that the pieces are distorted, out of shape and full of flaws. Only the manufacturer can repair those broken parts, only He can perfect their shape so that they fit together in His original image. Our attempts to be unbroken may be well meaning, but He may need to break us completely in order to put us together correctly. The reasons for that are complex, but as we explore this issue of perfection it will become clear that only a complete transformation will suffice, if we are to ever experience the perfect love we are created for in a way that lasts.

I believe that Perfect Love is the primal source and motivation of all there is. Perfect Love is at the heart of creation, Perfect Love is the reason we are here in the first place and Perfect Love is the goal of humanity. The seed of this Love is within every person, a seed which is forced to grow within the soil of our imperfection, a seed which is watered with all of the bitter essence of our flawed human condition, a seed which can never by itself fulfill what it was created to be. That seed requires hope and faith, and a new connection with the source, before it can begin to grow and be transformed into that from which it originated.

Whether we yet recognize it or not, it is possible to experience Perfect Love. There is a road that leads there, a narrow path which can take the true seeker to a place where hope becomes certainty, where faith is grounded in reality, and Perfect Love becomes a constant companion.

Chapter Two

The Desperate Search

All composite things pass away. Strive for your own salvation with diligence.

Gautama Buddha

Buddhism

When considering great people in history, many would say it would be difficult to find a more virtuous person than Siddhārtha Gautama, the man commonly referred to as Buddha. Born a prince around 563BC, he lived in luxury, ignorant of what lay beyond the confines of the palace walls until he was confronted by the human misery he witnessed on a trip into the world of ordinary people. Like Francis of Assisi hundreds of years later, he walked away from wealth in order to pursue spiritual perfection. Legend has it, that after studying Hinduism for years, he became disillusioned with its teachings and, while meditating under a fig tree for 49 days, became what Buddhists call 'enlightened'.

Buddha's teachings are encapsulated in what is called the Perfection of Wisdom. In a very real sense they call people to diligently control and eventually perfect the human nature. Buddha was raised as a Hindu. Hinduism, although difficult to define because of its nature to continually change, taught an idea of a Supreme Being who was in the form of three gods, Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma. Initially, in the Vedas, there are simply many gods, 330 million of them, incidentally, the exact same number as the fallen angels who were expelled from heaven with Lucifer, according to the Bible.

Buddha rejected the Hindu teaching about God. He believed that belief in a Supreme Being was unhealthy, for perhaps similar reasons as the father of atheism, Feuerbach. Feuerbach saw God as a 'wish-projection', a being humans had created who was everything we wished to be but could not. Buddha thought that if people believed in a completely perfect Supreme Being, then they may lose heart in their search for enlightenment, as the goal was far too lofty and impossible to attain. Buddha denied the existence of a Creator and refused to ever endorse any ideas about the origin of life or creation. In doing so, he brought the concept of perfection from an infinite one to a purely finite one. Buddha brought perfection down to man's level.

The main difference between Francis of Assisi and Buddha in this respect is in the standard they used for perfection. Francis compared himself with the perfection of God as revealed in the Bible, whereas Buddha, having rejected God completely, had only himself or other humans as his standard. And yet millions have the idea that Buddha reached perfection. Could the enlightened Buddha tell us how many drops of water were in the ocean, stars in the universe, or even brain cells within his own body?

None of his writings suggest even the slightest hint of this possibility, so what was he referring to as the Perfection of Wisdom? In simple terms, Buddha was obsessed with the idea of alleviating suffering. He considered Nirvana, the Buddhist understanding of heaven, to be exactly that, a realm of existence devoid of suffering. Those who haven't reached this goal, the majority of people, are still bound to Samsara, the continuous cycle of rebirth through reincarnation. Salvation for Buddha is to be beyond suffering. The world has had Buddhism for 2,500 years, a lot of time to evaluate its effects. Today, the largest Buddhist population lives in China, with about 100 million adherents, followed by Thailand, Vietnam and Tibet.

Has Buddha's teaching done anything to alleviate suffering? Where are the 'enlightened' ones, or is 2,500 years of reincarnation not long enough to produce any perfect people? That's about 35 lifetimes. Is there still terrible suffering in the countries mentioned above? Sadly, whenever people reject God and His Laws, the value of human life becomes almost zero. Lenin, Stalin and the present-day Chinese government, all have despicable records on human rights. Like Buddha they answer to their own idea of values, having rejected a Supreme Being to whom they would have to answer to.

Buddha had fine intentions. When he walked out of his palace, secretly leaving his wife and young son, he was searching for a way to help himself and others. He tried to find a way to alleviate suffering, but perhaps he should have been asking the question of why suffering is here in the first place. Perhaps that question would have led him to find an answer to the origin of life. When a person rejects a Supreme Being, he then has no answer to the origin of life, for he has decided there is no Creator. Such a man denies the empirical evidence of design all around him. How can a man give answers for life when he cannot even give an answer to its origins?

Did Buddha find what he was seeking? If he was seeking a limited idea of human perfection, then perhaps he did. But we can be certain of this. He never found the Infinite Perfection of God, at least not in this life, for one can never find that which he doesn't seek, especially if he believes it doesn't exist. And yet he maintained a belief in Nirvana, an idea incredibly similar to the Christian understanding of heaven. The man who taught his disciples that they could reach perfection on Earth also taught a distinction between the earthly and the heavenly. In doing so, he as much as admitted that only through death can a person hope to enter perfection.

The last words he gave his disciples were to 'work diligently on their own salvation'. How? Through meditation mostly. In order to become what is called enlightened, one must devote his entire life to mediation and solely 'spiritual' actions. In reality, this means that someone else cooks for you, someone else plants your crops and harvests them, someone else provides shelter and clothing, as you are too busy 'working out your salvation'. But his ideas and those of the ancient Hindu masters didn't stay in the lands of their origin.

New Age Religions

Both Buddhism and Hinduism have reached Western shores in various forms over the past eighty or so years. Many people, disillusioned with traditional Christianity, are seeking perfection in the mystic traditions that promise enlightenment through various avenues of self-development. Gurus clad in white robes with dark smiling eyes and charismatic personalities give off an air of peaceful satisfaction and, to the person whose life is filled with business meetings and traffic jams, the allure is seductive. In cultures where money is seen as the measure of success, the calm demeanor of the guru is like a breath of fresh air in the smog of the corporate rat race.

'The answer to that emptiness is finding self', being free from the bonds of religious oppression, free from the notion of sin which brings discontent. Such is the message. For a reasonable fee you can learn techniques which take your mind to levels of consciousness you never dreamed existed and, instead of the hyper talk-show radio, you can listen to the soothing eerie sounds of eastern stringed music on your way to work.

New Age religions such as Transcendental Meditation are not at all new. Their roots go back thousands of years. The basic message is that we are god, we are creator, we are life itself. Something within the soul comes to life when we hear those words; a latent memory buried beneath a pile of cultural baggage sends a cry for help to our conscious mind and calls us to get back to our roots, even if it is only for twenty minutes twice a day. We meet a friend who is learning some pseudo meditative yoga technique which we can scarcely pronounce; she tells us how calm she feels, how 'back to nature' she is becoming, and next week we have grabbed our tracksuit pants and the introductory course fee and are heading for the 'enlightenment center'.

We sign up, get changed, sit down beside someone who looks as lost as we are, and stare at those dark eastern eyes and shining white teeth as our instructor proceeds to have us close our eyes and take the first steps on our journey to self-fulfillment. He speaks with that delightful eastern accent as his head moves from side to side, his bronzed athletic body completely unlike the potbellied souvenir we have of Buddha which sits on our office desk for a paper weight.

Two weeks later we are benefiting from the relaxation and time out, and telling others to get involved. After a few months we learn about the next level. We buy the guru's latest book, which we barely understand, we read The Prophet and scan the Bhagavad-Gita, hoping beyond hope that there is more to this than the dull ache we have begun to experience in our buttocks from the thin cushions in the enlightenment center.

But there is more. There is that journey towards the light, that transcendental bliss which no one seems to be able to describe because they haven't quite reached it yet, but they know they are on the verge of a spiritual breakthrough. We hold our breath in anticipation, let out a sigh, and sign up for the next step.

Self in the center, it feels good. No talk of vanity, pride and that horrid little word 'sin'. When we are called to celebrate self, told that self is the ultimate, self is the all in all, we can feel this feeling of freedom from that 'old time religion' which threatened hell for those things we felt compelled to do when no one was watching, those things that women never think about and men can't stop thinking about, and heaven for those who took daily doses of self-condemnation.

Level two opens the doors to level three. That imaginary door which we saw was slightly ajar, that door from which we saw the promise of perfection shining like a blinding light through a tiny crack, beckoning us to walk or levitate into god status. But there is that odd ceremony to undergo, that thing the guru said was just a cultural way of giving honor to the long gone teachers who so wonderfully left us this incredible knowledge of how to find perfection. We go home, break the piggy bank, collect a white handkerchief, rice, flowers, or whatever we were asked to bring, and wonder what happened to the simple meditation thing we used to do twenty minutes twice a day.

I remember vividly my own experience of the higher level back in the early 1980s. Having done Transcendental Meditation (TM) for quite some time and, learning of the next step which included levitation, one could be excused for thinking they were on the path to self-enlightenment and perfection. I was to become a Siddha, an old Sanskrit word for one who has found perfection. Twenty siddhi techniques were on offer for several thousand dollars, advanced mantras called sutras that promised to bring supernatural experience and open the path to enlightenment.

Thirty initiates were housed in an old hospital dormitory and I was given my own 'cell' for two weeks. We were under strict controls. No leaving, no meat, no fraternizing with the opposite sex and no reading the wrong literature. On our first day we learned just how 'scientific' this whole thing really was. TM had been promoted as a purely scientific technique and those of us who wanted to remain naïve believed it. But after listening to readings from the ninth mandala of the Rig Veda for hours the ignorance began to dissolve.

We signed contracts and were given the first 'magic words' of the seers of old. Here we were waiting for strange words in a strange tongue, something akin to abracadabra, so our disappointment mounted when the instructor told us the first sutras were simple English words, 'invisibility, strength of an elephant, trachea', and the like. So we went to the 'flying room', a large space with foam mattresses covering the floor, covered our shoulders with meditation blankets and meditated on the words. Nothing happened. We remained visible and our strength did not increase. But there was much more to come; there was the 'flying technique', the one sutra which promised positive manifestations that we were heading for spiritual power and perfection.

The flying technique was much more mysterious than the others; a two-part sutra which sounded like it was from ancient times. "Relationship of body and Akasha, the lightness of cotton fiber".

We went down to the flying room with our new meditative chant and took positions around the walls. Max (not his real name) sat in the center of the room, a long-term TMer who looked like a hippy version of Jesus complete with beard and long hair. An equally skeptical friend and I sat and watched from the side wall.

Max sat for a while unmoving and then suddenly threw himself backwards, his feet coming dislodged from his yoga lotus position, his arms falling beside his body. Then he began to convulse violently, his back arching as if in pain, his eyes rolled into the back of his head, arms and legs thrashing about uncontrollably. My friend and I moved to his side, fearing he was epileptic and having a violent fit. We tried to hold him but he had incredible strength. Two others joined us and the four of us managed to keep his body prone. We sent another of our party of sixteen men to find a doctor as we tried to see if Max's tongue had turned down his throat; he was making the most horrendous animal sounds.

A few minutes later the violence stopped abruptly. Max opened his eyes. He sat up as saliva dribbled into his beard, put his feet back into the lotus position, pushed us away, and proceeded to bounce down the room like a human version of Kermit frog, all the while making strange grunting sounds. My friend and I retreated to our positions beside the wall and over the next few days watched nine of the others go through a similar process.

In the evenings, after our lintel soup and cauliflower cheese, we talked with those we had seen learning what is commonly called 'yogic flying'. The stories were similar. "The most ecstatic experience I have ever had", "like sex but a hundred times better", "a beautiful light filling my body", "no I have never had an epileptic fit".

My friend turned 'frog' the next day, but I was having reservations, as were four other guys and, worse than this, a name I associated with religious bigotry kept coming into my mind when I tried to do my sutras. "Jesus". With only six days to go and five of us still not off the ground, we earthbound 'siddhas' had a meeting. After flirting around the subject of what we might have in common for about an hour, I ventured a confession.

"Every time I sit eyes closed meditating on the flying technique, I see this golden light coming towards me in the center of my vision," I told them.

They nodded; they had seen it too.

"And then this name comes into my head and destroys the whole thing," I continued.

"What name?" one of the guys asked me.

I looked a little embarrassed at this point. Jesus Christ was not a popular topic at the dinner table, unless of course one was ripping Christianity to pieces.

"Jesus," I confessed.

Those four guys stared at me, but not as I had expected. I had expected to be branded as a traitor, a fool, or demented farm boy, but instead, each one confessed the very same thing. Enlightenment indeed! We called one of the teachers for an explanation and he proceeded to tell us that our childhood horror stories about the fear of God, demonic possession and the like, was bubbling up from a well of stress in the form of the name 'Jesus'. This was common in the western world he confided with that all-knowing look.

"So what do we do?" we asked.

"Just tell Him to #@% off," he told us, with a hint of a smile on his face. "He doesn't exist in reality, but in your minds He is there."

I was 'flying', as were the others, within two days and, within a week the guilt of what I had done was waning. The golden light came, it entered me, ecstatic feelings exploding and then fading away. I had punched a hole in the wall beside me in my 'fit of enlightenment', but at least I could get my backside a few inches off the ground without any help.

The day before we left to go home we had an all-male session in that room, about 80 siddhas of various levels of experience, all 'flying' in the same direction, jumping on top of each other, some in various states of sexual arousal, and the noise was like entering Noah's Ark ten minutes before the door closed and the rain started. We had roosters, dogs, pigs and horses, grunts and squeals and shrieks of laughter as the TM teachers bounced higher with the spiritual power generated by our numbers, their suits, ties and polished shoes safely stored in their cells waiting for their next public meeting.

For years I followed a religious regime designed to bring me to spiritual perfection. Yoga arsanas to prepare the body, twenty minutes of normal mediation and an hour of the siddhi techniques. This was twice a day every day before breakfast and the evening meal. One was also expected to read passages from the Rig Veda every day.

What was the result?

Arrogance, pride, and the illusion that we were on a higher spiritual level than the mob. Indeed, we were the enlightened ones bringing salvation to the world through our dedication. Such are the thought processes of those who place self in the center. We believed in ourselves and in the laws of karma, that law which states that a person must return to work out the evils they have committed in their previous lives. When we saw a person in a wheelchair, crippled for life, or a child born with a serious physical or mental defect, our compassion was nowhere to be found. Before TM I had often felt deep compassion for the less fortunate, but after years of practicing and living the laws of karma, my compassion turned to disgust, believing that these people must have been extremely evil in previous lives.

In public we spoke of love and enlightenment; we used words like bliss and perfection, but the truth was that we were as empty as when we began, indeed, after being joined to the beings who promote self-centeredness, we were less human than before.

People cannot fly; they cannot lift themselves from the ground using meditation techniques. We had help, spiritual help, supernatural help from creatures not bound by the physical dimensions of humanity. Once they entered the body their characteristics became ours in a limited sense, and their passion for self-worship became the center of our consciousness. The magical sutra for levitation, relationship of body and Akasha, lightness of cotton fiber, was the channel through which they entered. Akasha is an old word for cosmos, the lord of cosmos is the prince of demons, and connecting our bodies to him opened the consciousness to demonic infiltration and possession.

Self-deception is the heart of New Age religion because self seldom judges itself honestly. We are often told that the 'love of self is the greatest love of all'. If we are speaking of the need for confidence or acceptance amongst peers or the motivation to succeed in life, then yes, loving oneself is important. But if we are speaking of vanity and pride, of judging ourselves against others, of placing ourselves above and in the center, of believing that we are becoming as gods, then self-love is the greatest evil that can exist as it is the very enemy of humanity and God.

Many New Age religions teach that we are on the 'Wheel of Life', that once we were gods. We lose our divinity as the wheel turns and start the process of thousands, millions of lifetimes back to where we were. Once we reach there again, the process begins again. The wheel has no purpose; its goal is to reach perfection only to lose it again through endless repetitions.

Others teach that when we reach this elusive enlightenment we become part of the 'great essence of Brahma', the essence of perfection. Our individual identities are merged with the pure energy of perfection. It amazes me now how I never saw the incredible contradictions in this teaching while I was a part of it. One is supposed to center on self in order to lose self, one is supposed to develop self in self-development programs in order to eventually have no self at all.

Images of Hindu sages and the Buddha conjure up ideas of humility, gentleness and selflessness, but in reality, these guys' families support them so that they can spend their days meditating, their entire lives evolve around themselves and no one else. Their wives and daughters serve so that they may be reborn as a man, for no woman can be enlightened. They take food to the monks who beg instead of working. Even the monk's act of brushing the ground as he walks, and never eating meat are grounded in selfishness. If he kills an insect or eats the flesh of an animal he may bring bad karma upon himself, he may be forced to come back and live another life. All is centered on self.

Back to Nature

There is within most people a love of nature. That cabin in the mountains or beside the lake, that quiet getaway place where we long to feel at one with nature, for at least a while, is a longing for most of us. There is something about walking through a forest of tall trees, the sunshine filtering through the leaves, the smells of vegetation and fresh air, the sounds of birds and the whisper of the wind. For many it is the forest, for others the mountains and for me, the ocean. I love to walk on a deserted beach, winter or summer, to smell the sea, listen to the constant roll of the waves or hear them crashing upon rocks.

'Back to nature' is not the same as naturalism. Naturalism is a philosophy which seeks to provide answers to life without references to anything supernatural. This philosophy has its roots in the writings of Aristotle and was made popular by Francis Bacon, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and others. The 'back to nature' philosophies of recent times are not necessarily connected to the theories of naturalism, for many who desire to get back to nature believe in supernatural forces connected to someone or something they call Mother Earth or Mother Nature. The recent movie Avatar is a case in point. This popular film contrasts the corporation plundering the mineral wealth of a planet with the indigenous peoples whose lives are mystically, spiritually and physically tied to the planet itself.

The corporation tries to infiltrate the indigenous people using avatars, bodies created to house the self of the person, bodies made to look like the people of the planet. The indigenous people eventually win over the avatars through demonstrating the power of nature, oneness with the forces of life. This movie aptly portrays the belief that many have about this world, or at least the feelings that they have towards nature. All over the world, in one degree or other, back to nature philosophies are becoming protests against corporate greed, against artificial foods, genetically modified vegetables, the killing of whales, destruction of rain forests, nuclear energy, and the like.

For most it is just common sense to look after the planet, but for an increasing number of people it is much more. Back-to-nature products are sold in most major cities and, beneath the common sense ideals of organic foods which are grown without pesticides, is a mysterious belief in the 'positive energy' of eating that which is the gift of mother nature herself. Young people are exploring the allure of ancient pagan religions which hold a promise of getting back to a time when nature and man supposedly lived in harmony with each other. Stories of druids, the mysteries of Stonehenge, forest goddesses, white witches and herbalists combine with the natural instinct we have to be at one with creation.

On one particular walk on the beach I came across an interesting sight. It was a winter's night during the full moon with clear skies and a little frosty underfoot. Thinking I was alone in the beautiful silver light, I rounded a corner to find a group of middle-aged hippy types dancing in various stages of nakedness around a fire they had lit on the beach. Seeing me, they invited me to join them as they were almost finished whatever ritual they were performing. I found a spot on a washed up log and a discussion soon developed. They took it in turns to try and convince me that they were moving within the positive energy of the earth and somehow connecting with the cosmos.

I wondered if the marijuana being passed around might have had something to do with these feelings and listened as they told stories of their mystical experiences. They spoke of meridian lines of energy, of the druids and others. I asked them of their goals. None could give me a clear definition, but it was obvious that they hoped they were onto something and, at the very least, the sense of freedom they enjoyed from throwing off their clothes and inhibitions could not be denied.

I left them to smoke and laugh and continued my walk. The story of Adam and Eve came to mind as I thought about these people and those like them. That primal couple, naked in paradise, walking in innocence in a garden of exquisite beauty and unspoiled perfection. Is there some latent memory deep within the human soul, or even our DNA, which cries out to get back to the garden? Do we seek a perfection once lost? Do we feel a primal urge to go to the forest where the taint of human defilement has not been, to throw off our clothes, to try and experience the freedom that Adam and Eve once knew, or to skinny dip in a lake?

Maybe you have tried such a thing only to end up standing on a sharp stick in your bared feet or having to run for a towel because of the cold. The desire to get back to nature and perfection is there, but the grim reality soon returns and sends us home to coffee and a hamburger.

But that pull remains for the desire to know perfection is strong within humanity. We book holidays to beautiful islands, pastel blue waters and waving palm trees, and then some idiot on a jet-ski reminds us that there is no escape from the reality of our modern world. We grab a pack, cans of beans and the bare essentials, determined to spend a weekend living off the land; we trek for hours through the forest to a log cabin, light a fire and enjoy the quiet, only to walk outside and see a plane leaving its tracer lines across the sky as it takes the corporate managers and their staff back to the city. After a few days of this we are longing for a hot shower, clean clothes and a good meal with all the trimmings.

The call to get back to our roots is strong; would it not be strange if this were not so? After all, human beings have a natural connection with the Earth. According to Genesis, our bodies were formed from the 'dust of the ground', and when we die we return to that same dust. From a physical perspective we are tied to the Earth, we are 'earthbound', but from a spiritual perspective we are made in God's image. We are earthbound creatures trying to become the image, to fill a void and leap across an invisible gulf, and yet something powerful frustrates and prevents us. It isn't just the reminders of modern life, the annoying things which break the spell we are trying to create, rather, it is something more serious, something within that is empty. Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden and have left us a legacy, a barred gate which is more than natural, it is a spiritual separation from our roots, roots which are much more than the earth from which we came and to which we eventually return.

The Science/Creation War

From the 17th century onwards many people were questioning the teachings of the Bible and turning to forms of scientific reasoning for answers to life. The Roman Catholic's treatment of astronomers like Copernicus and Galileo only added insult to injury as people began to view the Church as superstitious and backward, an institution which refused to accept scientific facts. The 19th century heralded in Charles Darwin's evolution theories which gave the emerging sciences an alternative answer to the problem of the origins of life. With the atheistic and utopian philosophies of men like Hegel and Nietzsche, and the general expectation that the entire world was moving towards perfection, evolution theory fitted the bill exactly.

The early twentieth century saw the emergence of the Fundamentalist movements within Christianity. In many ways these movements were trying to turn people back to the Scriptures for answers. However, unfortunately, they developed a very anti-scientific approach and started a war between scientists and creationists. They attacked scientists who suggested that the universe was older than about 10,000 years and took an almost exclusively literal approach to the interpretation of Scripture. If the Bible said God made everything in 6 days then, for the Fundamentalist, this had to be six days of 24 hours, despite the fact that the first chapter of Genesis says that the sun and moon, the two celestial bodies by which we measure our time, were not created until the 4th day.

For almost a century this war has raged between the two and, sadly, it has been kept alive and taken out of proportions in countries like the USA, where Fundamentalists flourish, and the former USSR, where the communist government wanted to destroy Christianity. Since the 1960's there has been a profound shift in thinking on both sides. Many Christian theologians and Biblical scholars who recognize good science as the means by which we observe nature and make conclusions, have studied Scripture without Fundamentalist glasses covering their eyes, and discovered that proven scientific facts are never incompatible with deep theological interpretation. Scientists also have made huge discoveries, especially within areas such as microbiology and astronomy, as technology has improved. They have discovered undeniable evidence for design in nature. Indeed, the theories of Darwin regarding the origin of life have been shown to be completely false. Books such as Michael Denton's Evolution a Theory in Crisis and Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box, have offered powerful arguments and scientific data which refute Darwinian theory and call for evolutionary scientists to come out and tell the truth.

One would think the world would have welcomed such discoveries; however, the truth is that the science/creation war has been going for so long that truth really just got lost in the process and neither side is willing to compromise. Therefore, we have outdated science being taught in schools and anti-scientific theology preached from pulpits.

Some scientists, recognizing that the evidence for design cannot be refuted, began to formulate other theories without the need to use that hated word "God", or to put themselves into a position of having to admit that there may well be a personal intelligence out there who has certain demands.

The key word has become 'energy'. Energy is such a loose term that it can be used to fit almost anything. New Agers can grab onto it and speak of it as 'pure creative intelligence' which manifests itself in meridian lines, crystals, and the like, scientists can simply call it a form of self-realizing energetic matter, but the bottom line is that this energy is non-personal, and therefore non-threatening in terms of things like sin, morality, etc. It's not uncommon to hear people speaking about the energy of the universe and how this creative energy is propelling us all towards perfection.

In Russia, numerous laboratory tests have been done on dead bodies to determine what happens to the energy in the body. Does a body cease to contain energy the moment it dies? Does this Christian notion of a soul departing and leaving an empty, life-less shell hold any truth? It is claimed that when a body dies, be it a cat, dog or human being, that there is an initial dissipation of energy, and then over a period of months another slower loss of energy as the matter changes form. This discovery has been heralded as proof positive that we are all simply manifestations of an intelligent mass of creative energy which is never increased or decreased, but which simply turns into something else.

Theories abound on the origins of this energy. The easy answer is simply that energy is infinite. It is obvious to all that the world is an active, ever moving/changing, energetic example of life. It is obvious that life, or the components needed for life, in some form or other exists in almost all matter. An animal eats grass, it excretes the used product, and yet that product which appears dead and smelly is the energy source, in the form of fertilizers, to produce vibrant plants. Is a dead tree really dead, or has it simply taken on a new form; is it rotting in order to become a new form of energy for other small plants and seeds it has dropped around its roots throughout its tree life? Where did all this energy come from? Does anyone really care? Using words like infinite and eternal are deemed to be an answer to such pesky questions.

For many people who have that fundamental rebellion against submitting to a personal God, the concept of self-realizing energy fits the bill perfectly. It's a form of 21st century evolution theory with enough mysticism in it to make it sound almost like a scientific religion.

Interestingly, in this case science is actually catching up with Christianity. For many centuries the idea of divine energies has been taught, especially within Eastern Orthodox theology. In general, and simple terms, Christianity differentiates between God's essence and His energy. God's essence is that which is completely independent of any material thing, uncreated, infinite and eternal. God's energies are manifested in everything He has created. To make it simple we could explain it this way. God in His essence is a Trinity existing in three indivisible persons who have no beginning or end and are therefore, not bound by time, dependent on matter, or any other thing. In nature God's creative energy is demonstrated in all objects. A tree grows because the life-force or energy of God makes it grow. God has designed the tree to provide a different form of energy (fertilizer/compost) as the tree goes through a cycle.

The tree is only ever a manifestation of the creative energy of God, and never in a real sense connected to the essence of God. Human beings, however, being made in the image of God, can experience both the energy of God which gives them life, and also the essence of God as His very uncreated nature communicates with them, and can even come to dwell within them.

Science understands to a degree the creative energy of God, although, of course, the word "God" is unnecessary at that point, however, when it comes to trying to really explain the origins of energy, science is forced to add words like creative and self-realizing, because that fundamental truth of incredible design will just not go away. However, to the person who is broad-minded enough to at least accept that this self-realizing energy may have a personality, energy as a term is not enough, because energy without a personal, intelligent, self-aware creativity would never manifest itself in art, beauty, love, etc. In order to give even a primitive explanation for intelligent design we need to speak of a designer. Therefore, we are forced to admit that a designer must be aware of Himself and incredibly creative to have designed a universe so infinitely complex as the one in which we exist.

If we insist on creating God in our own image or trying to force Him into the box of our limited imaginations, we will only succeed in denying who and what we are and what we can become.

Atheism

As a philosophy atheism stands on the very pinnacle of human arrogance. In terms of antiquity, modern atheism is merely a babe, being only about 200 years old. Born in the Age of Reason, a time when humanity was pitting science against superstition, it completely divorces itself from that which it was created for. Its father, Ludwig Feuerbach, studied philosophy under Hegel. He attacked Protestant Christianity, especially the theology of a man called Friedrich Schleiermacher who insisted that the essence of Christianity was a 'feeling of absolute dependency on God'. Feuerbach turned this idea on its head. For Feuerbach, humanity had created an ideal of perfection outside of itself, projected the desire for perfection onto an imaginary being and called it 'God'. This he termed 'wish projection'. God, for Feuerbach, was a projection of man's own nature, and for man to reach his destiny God must be taken out of the mind and out of the way.

The obvious question that one would want to put to Feuerbach is simply this. "If there is no God, no Creator, then how can destiny exist, for destiny is grounded in the idea of purpose?" Without an intelligent designer existence can have no purpose at all!

Atheism found the perfect partner in the theories of Charles Darwin. In his Origin of Species, published in 1859, Darwin provided atheism with an answer to the origin of life, or so it appeared.

Atheism and Evolution, a marriage of the most contradictory ideas ever to come out of the minds of mankind. Evolution theory claims that the universe was created by chance, a random collision of atoms and gases which started a process of life. No Creator, no designer, no purpose; it simply happened. Feuerbach insisted that the idea of God was standing in the way of human progress, of human destiny.

Progress towards what Mr. Feuerbach? "Perfection of course". If we are products of random chance, then we have no destiny, no purpose and certainly no goal. To suggest such a thing is the ultimate contradiction, for it posits the idea that the universe somehow has an intelligence of its own which drives it towards perfection, an intelligence created by random chance. The fundamental arguments against such a ridiculous assumption are outlined and argued in Time for Truth: A Challenge to Skeptics which is freely available on the author's website.

The discoveries of scientists in the 18th and 19th centuries caused many to believe that humanity had entered an age of progress from which there could be no limits. The superstitious dogmas of the Medieval Ages were fast fading into oblivion and man was marching forward into a utopian world. This 'brave new world' mentality simply threw God into a basket labeled obsolete and man proclaimed himself his own creator. Not that man had started the process, no, in this system intelligence just happened, the atoms fused into life-forms, the life-forms mutated and, like magic, intelligence appeared. Like a half blind horse with side blinkers on its bridle, atheism galloped down the road of progress refusing to see the world around it, completely ignoring the Great Awakening which saw millions of people transformed by the Holy Spirit at the same time in history that infantile atheism was demanding that God did not exist.

Into the mix came Karl Marx, a German of Jewish descent. Marx, like Feuerbach before him, attacked Christianity as a 'pie in the sky' mentality. 'Religion is the poor man's opium' he claimed, a substitute for those who don't have and can't get what they want. Marx saw Christianity as a system which was forcing the poor to submit to the rich. For those countries which were still using a feudal system, this criticism seemed valid, however, in finding an answer to the problem he borrowed from the Bible itself. The first socialists were Christians. The book of Acts records that these transformed people sold land and possessions and shared their wealth, considering their property to belong to all in the family of God.

Marx borrowed this idea; however, he failed to ask himself the most important question. What force brought about this change? Why did people suddenly abandon selfishness and live for each other? One might argue that these early Christians believed that Christ would return within their own lifetimes, and if so, then saving for the future or investing for their children was unnecessary. There is an element of truth in this; however, this still doesn't answer the question concerning the catalyst for change. Marx was convinced that it was merely the power of religious ideas that introduced socialism into the 1st century and he believed that another active force could do the same. That force became known as communism.

Vladimir Lenin became the instrument by which Marx's ideals would be put into action. Communism became a force in itself. From a humanist point of view communism is a wonderful idea and the perfect ideal for a world entering the age of progress towards utopia. The twentieth century was going to be the century that changed the world and Lenin was to be the man to make it happen. There was only one problem. People! Communism started with a hiss and a roar, a cry for equality that sounded like a dream come true. Without a God to stand over and judge the proceedings, it seemed logical to simply eradicate any who stood in its way or threatened the cause, such as the intelligentsia, after all, in this system of thought human beings are only complex atomic forms, not sacred in any way. Many were murdered, especially the educated and creative and, of course, those with Christian views and convictions.

After Lenin, Stalin arrived on the scene, a man convinced that he was the 'superman' who was to come, the human messiah that the atheist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche prophesied would come into the world. On the same continent another man was reading Nietzsche and, like Stalin, was convinced that he was the one. The former became the leader of the communist party, the latter the fuehrer of Germany.

Within the eighty years that atheistic communism ruled in the Soviet Union, 60 million were slaughtered, people who were victims of a regime that used fear as a catalyst for change and death as a punishment for noncompliance. During this time two world wars witnessed the deaths of many more millions as the 'brave new world' marched on.

Atheism fundamentally denies humanity and contradicts everything it seeks to promote. Its active force, communism, presumed that people were evolving towards perfection; they just needed a little push in the right direction. By removing God it removed the basis by which humanity can judge any standard of morality, of right and wrong. Without God, the standards of right and wrong become the private domain of the individual. Stalin tried to be that individual, however, the natural outcome was corruption the likes of which the world had never seen before, and today the former Soviet Union is on top of the most corrupt countries list, a legacy of atheistic rule. Man without God is man as his own judge. Man in the place of God has never produced utopia, for the heart of man is rooted in self.

Socialism worked in the 1st century because of the transforming work of the Holy Spirit in the very core nature of those who were 'born from above', born anew. This was the catalyst for change, not an ideal or religious idea, but a fundamental change in the human heart that overflowed into the reality of everyday life, an active force of love rather than fear. For all his good intentions, Marx left a legacy of bloodshed the likes of which had never been imagined. His idealist utopia was a living hell for the millions who suffered for his dream of perfection without the transforming power of the Perfect One.

Let's Go to the Movies

In the past decades the movie industry has entertained us with various genres including those which reveal our insatiable fixation with perfection. The Star Trek series is a classic example of this. The star ship Enterprise travels through various star systems encountering imaginary civilizations and making 'first contact'. Many of these civilizations are primitive manifestations of life, barely started on the evolutionary process and theory which the series is based on. When these civilizations encounter beings such as the well developed humans from earth, they mistakenly consider them as gods. The 'prime directive' is therefore strictly adhered to, a rule of law which prohibits the Enterprise crew from interfering in the evolution of other, especially less evolved, beings. These primitive cultures are more often than not portrayed as superstitious, as having gods of weather and the like, a reminder to viewers that we are and have been like this as well.

But now and again the Enterprise comes into contact with beings far in advance of humans. These creatures are often portrayed as pure energy or light, of vast, if not infinite, intelligence, indeed, one might even say that they fit Feuerbach's idea of our wish-projections. The ideals of Buddhism, Hinduism, Evolution, Atheism, and back to nature, are all common themes throughout the series. All of these human ideals take various forms as the beings of these star systems go to war, form alliances and generally reflect the search for perfection we see on our own planet.

Staying with the genre of sci-fi, one only needs to watch the Star Wars series to see a similar idea. The 'force', an invisible energy of either good or evil, can be harnessed and expressed within different individuals. The Jedi Knight, whether a humanoid or green goblin-creature like Yoda, is a being that has joined himself/herself to the positive energies of life, a pseudo Buddhist idea. When the Jedi is killed in action he becomes something akin to an angel or 'bodhisattva', a being who retains his individuality and helps others to find the truth and perfection.

And then we have the superhero mentality, the comic book characters that are brought to life on the screen. Superman comes from Krypton, a humanoid being who has almost unlimited power on this planet, a force for good in the world fighting against evil. Superman's power comes from our yellow sun, and he is portrayed as a kind of messiah figure, the one who can turn us away from evil and towards perfection.

But perhaps the most common genre is romance. Thousands of movies give us the idea that somewhere out there in the world is our perfect other half. I remember one movie where a guy meets a girl on Christmas Eve while shopping. He drops his glove in the store and has to return for it, only to find his ideal woman at the counter. Thinking this is fate at work, he asks for her phone number and she writes it on a one dollar bill and then spends the dollar. If they are destined to be together then one day he will receive that dollar bill, fate will decide, and they will live happily ever after.

Fate and destiny play predominant roles in such movies, but more often than not, something prevents the young lovers from being able to be together. In one such movie a man finds letters in his mail box written from his love in another time zone. They are a perfect match, but the time zone prevents them from ever being in each other's physical presence. This is the tragedy of fate.

Many people watch these movies with a sense that if only they could find their 'soul mate', their 'other half', they would know a feeling of complete satisfaction, that emptiness within would disappear, being filled with perfect love. It's a beautiful idea and perhaps it is more than just an idea.

Some believe that the original couple, Adam and Eve, were both within the first human God created. God then took the side of the 'man' and made woman, his perfect other half and soul mate. This idea exists in many ancient cultures and, like most myths and legends, there may well be an element of truth within it. The Bible teaches that of all the creatures only humanity is 'made in the image of God'. The first people were with God in the Garden of Eden, a sinless paradise of exquisite beauty, a place undefiled by sin. When they looked at each other, did they see that part of themselves which made them whole, the part which completed the 'image'?

In general terms, men and women are different, not just biologically different, but the way we process information, the different levels of emotion, the maternal instinct, etc., make us what we are. No man can ever experience exactly what it is like to be a woman and vice versa. He cannot get pregnant and feel a new life growing within his body, he can only guess at what this is like. Men and women are individual creatures and complete in themselves, however, perhaps the complete 'image of God' is a union of all that each gender brings to humanity as a whole.

People all over the world equate perfect love with finding that partner who is their other half. Thousands of love songs use religious terms such as 'heaven', 'paradise' and words describing perfection. They 'can't live without' that person they perceive as 'Mr. Right'.

Are we seeking to be as the original couple were? Do we hear an inaudible voice calling us to be what we were before our parents were expelled from the garden? Such an idea would explain these powerful emotions. Is the act of joining with another in sex only a biological urge, or is there some other force at work combining with hormones to cause feelings of love? After all, we do call it 'making love' and love in its purest form is a manifestation of perfection. As previously mentioned, it is possible for us to experience moments of perfect love so it shouldn't surprise us that within this area of emotion so many people seek so desperately to find perfect feelings which last.

In the movies, the script writer has the freedom to leave out that which hinders relationships. People find that person they believe is the one and live happily ever after, only in reality it usually doesn't work like that. Those people who seek to find fulfillment and spiritual satisfaction in another human being most often end up disillusioned, for we always find someone who is seeking the same thing, someone who is flawed as we are flawed. Like emotional/spiritual vampires we suck the life out of the other and, when the feelings have gone, we start the search all over again, never realizing that the fault lies within.

Only in being united to a perfect being can we hope to find peace from the desperate search. That is something which cannot be expressed in the movies.

Scientology

Desperate people are often gullible people and, at a time when evolution theory was rampant, and Christianity ducking its head from a scientific onslaught, onto the stage came a man who became for many a messiah figure, and for others, a fraud of immense proportions.

L. Ron Hubbard, born on March 13, 1911, has had screeds written about him and the religion he founded. Some would disagree with calling the Church of Scientology a religion, but it is exactly that in the true sense of the word, in that it claims to provide people with answers to life, a cause to believe in and a promise for the future.

Information about Scientology is freely available on public sites such as wikipedia, so here I will simply summarize as it pertains to our subject. Hubbard's followers have tried to portray him as a 'child prodigy' of sorts, a boy with wealthy relatives who could ride a horse before he could walk and knew exactly what he wanted by the time he was three. Such claims are necessary for an organization who wishes to portray their savior as a Deli Lama figure, reincarnated to give the world the knowledge necessary to save it from destruction.

The truth is that Hubbard was quite an ordinary child and underachiever, although some members of the church will insist that everything negative written about Hubbard is a fabrication of the CIA or other government organizations. Hubbard was a university drop-out and, although his disciples claim he was something of a pioneer in nuclear physics, he actually attained a failed grade in the subject. He had a passion for writing and, in his early years, produced pulp fiction and delved into science fiction. After some success he produced the manuscript called Excalibur, a mystical document which he couldn't sell to publishers, even though he claimed it was more significant than the Bible. He claimed that those who read the manuscript either went insane or committed suicide; such was the power of this revelation. Excalibur, according to Scientologists, was then locked away, only to be revealed to the religions' elite after Hubbard's death.

A term in the navy saw him relieved of command after carrying out gunning practice on an island he thought was uninhabited; the locals didn't appreciate it. After the war, Hubbard declined to return to his wife and children and moved into a mansion with the occultist and 'magician' Alistair Crowley. After participating in sexual occult activities, contacting his 'guardian angel' and sharing Crowley's lover, the two fell out and Hubbard moved on. In 1946 Hubbard committed bigamy when he married a woman called Sara while still married to his children's mother. He eventually divorced the first wife and stayed with the second living in a mobile home, receiving a veteran's pension and making money from writing.

He was arrested for petty theft in 1948 and ordered to pay a fine. After a time of depression and suicidal tendencies, he began working on what became the founding document of Scientology, Dianetics. This work claims that past experiences are recorded in the reactive mind as 'ingrams' and surface later to cause problems. Through a technique called 'auditing', these ingrams can be dealt with and the person 'cleared' of their effects. Using an 'e-meter', a crude form of lie-detector which measures electrical impulses, questions are asked of the person being audited and responses considered a reaction to previous traumas. Once all traumas have been removed, the person is claimed to be 'clear', to have an increased IQ and photographic memory.

Scientology offers educational programs which have, no doubt, helped many people who have suffered from under-confidence at school. These programs build the person's self-esteem by helping them identify areas which have held them back. Scientology also offers programs to people addicted to drugs and criminal behaviour, and, to all intents and purposes, the religion appears on the surface to be a wholesome organization aiming to improve the planet, and many could testify that the 'church' has improved their lives.

However, when one looks a little deeper, it is pretty obvious that these programs, although possibly well-intentioned, are more likely simply the public face of an organization which has a much more spiritual and egotistical agenda. For the mere beginner, any improvement in their self-esteem which leads to a better life can breed confidence and gratitude and make them ripe for the next levels, provided they have enough money. Getting to the 'clear' stage is expensive if, indeed, anyone ever gets there at all. This process requires specific donations, and participants move up through the various levels through auditing - whilst auditing those on the lower levels - along what is called the 'Bridge to Total Freedom' or just 'bridge' in Scientology jargon.

As one goes higher the cost goes up and the teachings become more and more esoteric. After one becomes 'clear', he/she can begin the OT (operating thetan) levels. One is told that he/she is essentially a 'thetan', a word close to the Platonic idea of a soul. Thetans are immortal and, at some time in the very distant past, we thetans created worlds and universes for our own pleasure. We were (and can become again) beings of immense power, a power we previously abused and consequently ended up as we are now, trying desperately to get back to where we were before. Sounds familiar? We were gods, we are still gods, albeit fallen, but we are basically good and we can be as gods again. Hinduism, Buddhism, with a little sci-fi thrown in for good measure; actually, a whole lot more than just a little sci-fi.

What do you do as a cult leader when everyone is supposedly catching up to you in terms of levels of knowledge? Simple! Create higher levels, levels which only you have reached.

Onto the Scientology scene comes the 'wall of fire'. Some 75 million years ago the dictator of a galactic confederacy called Xenu brought billions of people to earth, stacked them around volcanoes, and blasted them with hydrogen bombs. Their souls were then captured, and they were forced to watch movies which planted false information into them such as God, the devil, world religions and anything else which basically contradicts Scientology dogma. These thetans have been adversely affecting humanity ever since and auditing is necessary to eliminate this traumatic past.

Hubbard claimed that he was the first to discover this secret knowledge, and the first to deal with the 'wall of fire', coming through the incident with several broken bones. Critics claim that he admitted in a letter to using drugs and alcohol at the time, a claim not difficult to believe.

According to Hubbard, Xenu used spaceships which looked exactly like a DC8 aircraft, but without engines, the people wore clothes very similar to westerners at the time of writing, and deployed hydrogen bombs, etc. One would think that a man with such a rich imagination could have come up with something a little more original.

It is difficult to believe that people can be gullible enough to buy into this stuff however, after one has spent so much it can be even more difficult to get out. By the time of reaching the 'wall of fire' levels, Scientologists have spent tens of thousands of dollars, indeed, sometimes even hundreds of thousands.

Scientology has all the classic ingredients for the desperate seeker of perfection. The initial stages help the self-esteem, the initiate begins to feel he/she is part of an exclusive club and, as time goes by, he learns that he/she is/was a god of almost unlimited power who is changing the world and saving humanity. If you want to deceive people just massage their egos and dangle a carrot called secret knowledge or mysticism. However, I wonder if far less would get involved if people knew exactly what Scientology teaches before they began.

L. Ron Hubbard. Some consider him as a messiah figure and others as a hypocritical madman. Perhaps a choice is not necessary. Scientology claims to uphold moral values, to honour marriage, to help those caught up in drug addiction and give answers to life. Hubbard's descent into the occult, his adulteress relationship with Crowley's lover, his bigamy, alcohol and drug abuse, testify to a man who practiced 'do as I say, not as I do'. If people choose to place such a person on a pedestal and ignore the facts, they do so at their own peril, but as mentioned earlier, desperate people seek desperate solutions to the emptiness within.

Chapter Three

'Made in His Image'

God who is eternally complete, who directs the stars, who is the master of fates, who elevates man from his lowliness to Himself, who speaks from the cosmos to every single human soul, is the most brilliant manifestation of the goal of perfection.  Alfred Adler

The Spark of the Divine

If we could download all of the ideas, religions and dreams discussed in the previous pages into a computer and ask it to define the goal of the human search the answer would be 'origin'. In a very real sense, all of our striving to go forward is because we retain a reflection of the past. We know instinctively that some small seed of the answer lies within us, and those religions, programs, movies, dreams and mystery cults all present a small but real element of the truth. People sense an element of truth and chase it, only to find that the end result is disappointing and far from perfection.

When man tries to water the seed of Perfection with his own imperfection, only a distorted thing can grow. It may feel right in the beginning, but the road leads in the wrong direction because it always leads to the elevation of humanity as if we were our own creation. If we are to find perfection, then we must find the source of the seed that cries out for us to search.

What is it that separates humanity from the rest of the animal kingdom? According to the 1st century apologist Justin Martyr, it is that human beings have a seed of the divine within us. Other philosophers from various religions have used the phrase 'spark of the divine'. Justin was never suggesting that all human beings have the Divine Nature of God living within them, but rather an imprint, an image, a reflection.

Perhaps an easier way of understanding Justin's philosophy would be to call it 'sparks of Divine knowledge'. Justin suggested that at least part of the image of God was found in the reason of humanity, within our minds. Compare humans with other animals. According to the atheist and evolutionist, we are the most evolved animals on the planet. In terms of intellectual ability this is obvious; however, the way we choose to use our intellects would make us wish we were as 'unevolved' as a dog. Dogs chase cats, perhaps for fun, perhaps even for food. Dogs don't get together and design sophisticated military hardware for destroying cats. Dogs don't have secret intelligence agencies for spying on cats, they don't bomb, shoot, kidnap or torture cats and they wouldn't rape a cat just to show power over their enemies.

We use our reason for both good and evil. Our desire for justice is a good example. Within all reasonable people is a hatred for injustice. We create wartime tribunals to punish what we perceive as atrocities, we cannot tolerate such crimes as murder, rape and child molestation. In short, the fact that we recognize right and wrong, good and evil, means that we stand apart from every other creature.

We may also suggest that 'the spark of divine knowledge' manifests itself in other areas outside of reason. Our emotions and creativity are classic areas of 'divine knowledge'. Just visit any museum of fine art or go to hear a musical concert, play, opera or movie, and you are witnessing expressions of human creativity. We may teach a monkey to imitate human behaviour, but at the end of the day the monkey, left alone, is not about to invent a guitar and start churning out top ten hits or grab brushes and paint a monkey version of the Mona Lisa.

We may well say that our cat or dog love us, indeed, it is possible to find traits of what we think is love, devotion and loyalty in other animals, however, these traits have been domesticated to a large degree and developed through human interaction. A wild dog or cat is simply that; wild and feral. Humans portray emotions out of a sense of self-awareness. We are jealous because self is involved, we love because self is involved, indeed, all of our emotions come from our awareness of ourselves as beings. Put your average cat or dog in front of a mirror and it doesn't recognize itself as a self, it is more likely to hiss with fright or bark at what it perceives as opposition.

Spark, seed, or knowledge of the divine; whatever term we choose to use, the meanings are much the same. Human beings are, as the Bible states, 'made in God's image'. Within every human is this seed or image of perfection, a seed desiring to grow, a spark which longs to be fanned into life. From the source, we instinctively catch glimpses of such things as creativity, love, justice and conscience, and it is this infinite spark which calls us to perfection.

So why is humanity as a whole not reaching perfection? Sure, we may argue that we are progressing on a technological level, perhaps even on a social level to a certain extent, and yet within the human character nothing has changed, human nature remains as selfish, vain and egotistical as human history itself. Why? Why can we not change the human condition, the human heart?

In order to answer that question, we must step back in time, back to our origins. To put it another way, if we retain a spark, if we are made in the image of the original, and if in perceiving even a tiny part of the original within ourselves as an echo of perfection, then Perfection must be much more than the sum total of all we can imagination Perfection to be.

Origins

The Bible tells us that humans were made in God's image (Genesis 1:21), and that the first humans were sent out of paradise because they sinned. In the brief account of Genesis we begin to see the biblical definition of perfection as it is applied to humanity. The Bible does not consider human perfection to be attaining perfect knowledge, power, physical ability or any other such attribute, but rather the absence of sin. For humanity, perfection is about firstly recognizing the difference between Creator and creature, that one is infinite and the other finite, and then living according to the will of our Creator.

Here, then, is the fundamental difference between biblical teaching and the teachings of the religions and philosophies we discussed previously. Other religious ideas recognize the divine seed and try to obtain perfection through various methods, only to become self-deceived and frustrated in their attempts. The self deception comes from a wrong understanding of the 'image of God'. The image is simply that, an image of who God is, but not God Himself. We are not little gods trying to become real gods, as some believe. We are creatures, beings made by an infinite Creator who is the manifestation of perfection. Our Creator has given us something that no other earthly creature has, namely, the awareness that we are a self, a person, an individual.

Hinduism loses sight of the infinite divide between Creator and creature and teaches that 'atman' (self) is Brahman (God). Scientology, Buddhism, and a host of eastern religions, make the same mistake and then wonder why they never get to God Himself. The creature cannot become its Creator, no matter how well-intentioned that may be. The first woman learned that mistake. The painting can never become the painter or the song the composer.

According to the story in Genesis, the Devil tempted Eve telling her she would 'be like God, knowing good and evil'. Eve wanted to be like God, a lofty desire. She looked at that fruit and saw it was 'good for gaining wisdom' and, although it had been forbidden to her, she took and ate. For that brief and fatal moment she was deceived into thinking that the gulf between Creator and creature was one she could jump across. She jumped, she fell, she died. The one who tempted her had already tried the same leap into madness. Satan had said in his heart 'I will make myself like the Most High God' (Isaiah 14:14). The one whose original name meant 'light bearer' had also plunged into darkness and become the 'Father of lies'.

Like Eve and Lucifer, all of us become aware of ourselves as a 'self', an individual. What we do with that awareness will determine our future. If we as creatures decide that we can create ourselves 'like the most high God', then we make a choice which can only lead to disaster. We are creatures, blessed creatures made in God's image and with the potential to know perfection as He sees fit.

Was Eve's desire a wrong one? Her desire to be like the one she had walked with in the garden was not wrong. How could she ever desire anything more pure, more perfect? She had seen the Creator Himself, the manifestation of perfection, and she longed to be like Him. Her sin was that she disobeyed Him; she wasn't prepared to trust His plan for her life. She wanted it all, she wanted it now; she wanted infinity in a moment of time, she wanted the seed to be a tree in an instant. She wanted what God had; perfect knowledge, perfect power, perfect love, and the Fallen One deceived her into believing she had only to reach out her hand and take it. How could a finite creature, a creature bound to the earth, made from the dust of the ground, reach the perfection of God in a moment?

We may believe that the Genesis account of Eve's fall is analogy or literal, but the outcome is the same. The human who was perfect in character and nature became imperfect through an act of rebellion against He who is perfect. In essence, Eve was saying, 'I know better than God how to be what I must become', and millions make the same claim everyday.

Eve was 'made in the image of God', as we all are. We may speculate about what that statement means and never find a complete answer, because the answer may also be something infinite, something only recognized in perfection. What we can say, however, is that within every human being is a spark, awareness or even imprint of the Divine. Within every painting the artist leaves his imprint, his emotion, his awareness, his goal. We are His painting, and He has left His imprint on us so that we sense within our innermost being the impression of His perfection. It is a spark of the Infinite which permeates every cell, like every stroke of the artist's brush driving us to become like the artist before the paint dries.

Eve fell, and within moments her 'other half' followed suit. Adam's desire to be like God blotted out reason, his hunger for the Infinite tempted him to know what she knew, to experience the knowledge of 'good and evil'; he chose to disobey the One who had given him life. That first couple were changed in an instant. In the very core of their natures the seed of disobedience took root, a seed which contaminated them physically bringing the slow decay of death and physical separation from He that is Perfection. God cast them from the Garden, for His holiness is to sin as fire is to ice, the one cannot exist in the presence of the other.

Within the first few chapters the Bible story explains why 'all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God' (Romans 3:23). Through the disobedience of our ancestral parents the seed of disobedience has been passed to all humanity, so that we are now driven by two conflicting desires; we long to know perfection, and we desire to sin against the One who is perfect. Such is the dilemma of the human condition, a condition imprinted within our natures, the seed of the Divine and the seed of disobedience. The question for Adam and Eve is the exact same question for every person ever born: 'God's way or our way?' That is the choice!

God gave Adam and Eve a simple command which they disobeyed. From beginning He had a plan for humanity, a plan which has never changed, for we were not made in His image to tempt us into disobedience, but rather to allow us to experience that which at present we can barely imagine; perfection, not simply an absence of sin, but to be like Him, as He is. The Creator made us from the dust of the Earth, therefore, while we have these earthly bodies we will always be other than He is. He had His reasons for that. He could just as easily have made us from pure light, pure energy or of the same essence as He is, but He chose to tie us to the Earth. We begin our journey of existence as earthbound creatures, and within us the image of our Creator calls us upwards. We have to decide if He, the Perfect One, knows better than us how to proceed on that journey.

But keep in mind that we begin our journey with a huge and unsurpassable problem; we begin with a nature that overwhelmingly dominates us to be rebellious, a nature opposite to the character of God, a nature we have inherited from our ancestral parents. That nature, being rooted in selfishness, produces pride, vanity, and arrogance, and no human born of solely human parentage has ever managed to overcome it and reach anything like a state of perfection. Understanding the fallen nature can help us to make the right decision about how to proceed.

The Fallen Nature

The Bible tells us that Adam and Eve felt shame after they sinned, they hid from God. They knew that something invaluable had been lost to them. Then, for the first time in history, an animal was killed as a sacrifice, its life's blood given to cover their shame, its skin used as clothing for their nakedness. Right there in the beginning of human civilization we see a model, a living analogy of what was to come. Adam and Eve had sinned, they had lost their human innocence, their perfection, and now their bodies were bodies of death and corruption counting down to the moment when life would leave them. God covered their imperfection with the skin of an animal whose death allowed forgiveness of sin. It would be a long time until the Law of God was given to Moses, a law which would reveal God's attitude towards sin, but there, in the beginning, God was showing us that 'without the shedding of blood, there can be no forgiveness of sin'. God, as a perfect judge, required life for life, death for death, in order for them to be able to proceed on their journey of life.

Within the first generation the fallen nature of humanity revealed itself in the murder of a brother by his brother. God had rejected Cain's offering which infuriated him, but his brother Abel's offering had been accepted. He desired to be accepted and the rejection fueled his anger. God warned him that sin was crouching at his door; he was told he must master it, but the roots of sin go deep into the very marrow of our being, and Cain watered it with his anger and jealousy until it drove him to plot and murder his brother.

From that day onwards the fallen nature of humanity began to reveal something about us which is at the heart of all sin. Rebellion! Scripture tells us that 'sin is lawlessness' (1st John 3: 4); it is to go against what is natural to the character of God, to rebel against our Creator. We have this inbuilt desire and capacity to rebel, a desire so powerful that all people have submitted to its call. I never met a parent who needed to teach their child to be naughty, it just comes naturally. Sometimes kids are just being curious or pushing the boundaries, but at other times they are just plainly rebellious. "Don't step into that puddle or your shoes will get dirty". Turn your back and listen for the splash.

As we grow older our sinful nature exhibits other ungodly characteristics which are perhaps even more serious, and the one which God hates and actively opposes is pride. Pride is considered by the Lord as one of the most despicable sins because it is rooted in self-worship. It is the original sin of Lucifer, the desire to place self in the center, the fundamental problem with Eastern religions. In men, it generally manifests itself in our egos, and in women, vanity. Pride refuses to admit it is wrong; it refuses to devalue itself before others. It hates to lose, it loves to be adored, and it becomes jealous when the attention it seeks is stolen. It will spend countless hours attending to its appearance, the clothes it wears, the make-up just right, the hair gel, the beard trimmed perfectly, manicures, cosmetic surgery, diets, body building; the list goes on and on.

But pride's worse feature, in biblical terms, is the idea that it is good enough. Pride judges itself against other people. Pride looks down on the alcoholic, the homeless, the prostitute or drug addict, and decides that it is better than those it judges. Pride believes that it is good enough for God and good enough for heaven. Pride boasts of its achievements, boasts of how charitable it is, boasts of how many of the Ten Commandments it keeps, and deceives itself into thinking that God must also see it the same way. Wrong!

Scripture tells us that 'God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble' (James 4:6). The reason for that is simple enough. Pride chooses to believe that it can create itself in its own image. Pride within the atheist, for example, believes that it is its own creator, pride within the guru puts itself on the same level as God, within the Scientologist, deceives itself into believing it was once an all-powerful being creating planets. Pride blinds the human mind to the truth and brings perfection down to its own pathetic level of ignorance. Pride perceives perfection in human terms, in finite terms, in the only terms it can understand. It doesn't look at God, for to do so would open its eyes to beginning to understand that Perfection is so far out of reach that 10 trillion lifetimes of meditation, auditing, or other method of 'self-development', would not bring it one millimeter closer to the infinite goal than when it started, indeed, pride takes us only further from the goal.

All of human history is full of millions of incidents of our sinful natures ruling our actions. Every war, every rape and murder, every selfish deed, immoral action, hateful thought and vain adoration has brought terrible suffering, broken homes, discarded children, genocide, abortion and countless other forms of human action that proves we are the sinners that the Bible says we are. The depressing fact is that 'all have sinned', we have deliberately followed our sin-natures and all but ignored the spark of the Divine that calls us to be like God.

God created that first couple in sinless perfection. They were not perfect as He is perfect, in the sense that they had infinite knowledge, power, etc., but they were sinless. Their disobedience plunged the world into evil and brought suffering upon every generation. Within a few thousand years humanity had become so corrupt that God brought a global flood. Some time later, as people multiplied again and turned to all manner of evil, God began a program of divine education and chose a specific people to teach the rest of the world about Himself and His plan for humanity.

Chapter Four

Divine Education

This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfections.

 Saint Augustine

God or gods?

The very notion of education implies that there is a goal in bringing the student to a place of understanding. Some 3,300 years ago God chose a man who had chosen to trust Him. That basic statement incorporates two important things. This man Abraham, or Abram as he was known then, had been taught about Jehovah God through the passing down of stories within generations from the time of the global flood. He chose to believe, and God chose him to be the father of a nation which would stand apart from the other nations. Divine education, like any other, requires both teacher and student.

Abraham lived in a city called Ur, the city renowned for the huge ziggurat which rose up in its center, the place where human and other sacrifices were carried out to appease the gods. The city of Ur was named after its patron god Nanna (Urim), the moon god. By the time of Abraham, Ur had existed for at least a 1,000 years and was one of the most powerful and important cities in the area. Its location on the Euphrates River, near the Persian Gulf, made it a center of trade and extreme wealth.

For the majority of humanity at this time, knowledge of truth was lost. People had spread throughout the known world and, like many today, sought answers to life within what can be perceived by our five senses. Those phenomena which could not be controlled, such as extreme weather, were feared. Droughts, famines, flooding, earthquakes, and the like, took lives. Added to this were the zealous plans of demonic entities whose master sought to completely control the world. Through the medium of human sacrifice, Satan empowered the various spiritual leaders of his arcane rites, and these occultist priests demonstrated powers which the common man could only submit to.

Within the natural world there are natural laws. The same can be said of the spiritual world. The blood of an animal or human was symbolized in its flesh and blood. In very simple terms, God the Creator is the source of all life, whereas Satan is the one through whom death was introduced to the world. For thousands of years demons had been educating people in occult practices, deceiving them into believing that they could contribute to controlling the forces of nature by appeasing what they understood as gods. Ancient books, such as the writings of Enoch, tell us about the forms of witchcraft which were prevalent at that time, practices which were developed before the great flood in which Noah and his family were saved. We can also get a clear picture from the earliest books of the Bible penned by Moses which outline the practices of the nations which God considered detestable.

People tend to believe what they can see, indeed, belief by sight is basically the opposite of belief by faith. The world of Abraham's time was a world in which people created physical manifestations of the gods they were taught to believe in. They brought their offerings to the priests and watched in awe as supernatural practices were performed before their eyes. They also brought their first-born to the priests, a mandatory offering, and swore their allegiance through the life-blood of their children. They watched as their captured enemies were torn apart, beheaded, and their hearts eaten. To them, these rites were absolutely necessary for the welfare of their empire, their success and wealth, and their mastery over other nations was proof positive that their gods were pleased.

For those of us who have never been involved in extreme forms of the occult, especially the practice of human sacrifice, the idea of supernatural powers may be difficult to believe. However; a thorough investigation of ancient empires which practiced occultist religions, such as the Egyptians, Sumerians, and later Babylonians, reveals that demonstrations of spiritual power were common and not merely superstitious fantasy.

Such was the world in which Abraham was born. What set this man apart was his conviction that the stories about the invisible Creator God, Elohim, were true. Abraham chose to believe that the God who was invisible to the senses was the only true God. This he believed by faith, a profound conviction that what was happening around him was a violation of life itself. Noah had believed by faith and handed down, through his children, the precepts of sin. But one of Noah's sons had walked away from the truth, had desired perversion, and his legacy was obvious in the empires which continued the demonic practices to which Noah had refused to be a part.

God called Abraham to leave Ur and travel to a distant land. This was stage one of the Divine Education. The first lesson in Divine Education 101 was that believing by faith rather than sight is fundamental to beginning the road to Perfection. God chose to create a nation through this man which would demonstrate, through their history, all of the fundamental and essential steps to coming to spiritual perfection. Those steps would include a realization of our willingness to be enslaved by sin, our reluctance to be set free, our readiness to throw away faith in the face of adversity, and even our willingness to walk away from paradise in exchange for the security of our slavery.

God's plan would stretch over centuries, through several world dominating empires, a plan so carefully prepared and executed that only the spiritually blind and self-deceived would miss it. Abraham passed DE101; he packed up all he had, said goodbye to his parents, and headed for a place unknown, led only by the power of his conviction that the One who called Him was trustworthy. He rejected the 'gods' of his contemporaries for the God which he knew in his heart. He acted upon the revelation he had received, and his action pleased the One who called him. He exercised faith!

During his life Abraham learned a lot about the character of God from personal experience. His faith and trust were tested often, and more than once he failed the tests. Not long after arriving in Canaan, the land now known as Israel, there was a severe famine. Abraham decided to go down to Egypt until the famine past. Concerned that the Pharaoh would see his beautiful wife, kill him and take her, he decided to tell the Egyptian monarch a lie and ordered his wife to be a part of the deception. He told the King that Sarah was merely his sister, not a complete lie in itself, as she was a half sister, but failed to inform the Pharaoh that Sarah was unavailable. The Egyptian King was taken with the beauty of the woman and took her into his palace to prepare for a wedding.

Neither Sarah nor Abraham revealed the truth to the Egyptians, but we can assume that at least Sarah was praying. The Lord intervened and taught Abraham that He can get the attention of even a pagan monarch who considers himself divine. Pharaoh gave Abraham great riches of animals and slaves, but God gave Pharaoh serious diseases and the knowledge that Sarah and Abraham were married. The Egyptian king feared for his life and sent them away.

Sarah was also tested. God promised them a child, but Sarah's impatience and lack of faith meant that she took matters into her own hands. Sarah was barren and had passed menopause. She couldn't see how God could possibly change her childless state. She gave Abraham her maid Hagar to be his wife, thinking she would use the woman as a kind of surrogate mother. Abraham went along with the plan and Ishmael was born, a child who was to become the father of the Arab nations.

About thirteen years prior to Ishmael's birth, God made a covenant with Abraham, a contract between them. At that time the Lord told him the future. God informed Abraham that his descendents would be slaves in a foreign land for 400 years. When Ishmael was 13, the Lord established a physical sign of His covenant with Abraham. He ordered Abraham to 'walk before Him and be blameless' keeping himself separate from the practices of the people around him. He ordered that all of the males of Abraham's tribe from eight days old and over be circumcised.

God also taught Abraham about sin; in the valley near the Dead Sea, stood the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. It was from here that asphalt was collected and used for different purposes, including a form of cement between layers of brick. But Sodom and Gomorrah were well-known for their immorality, as well as their tar. Homosexuality was the norm; indeed, natural forms of sexual activity were practically abandoned. These were cities which celebrated sex and sexual perversion. Abraham witnessed the destruction of these cities, and their inhabitants, as God showed him a picture of the final destination of those who reject His call to holiness in favor of a life of sinful rebellion.

When Abraham was 100 years old the promised heir was born. He was called Isaac. God had one last test for Abraham before his death. This test foreshadowed God's requirement for the status of perfection, and looked forward prophetically towards the coming of Jesus Christ, who alone can bestow the gift of perfection to those who are called by God.

Abraham was ordered to take Isaac to the mountain on which now stands the city of Jerusalem, and there to offer in sacrifice his son Isaac. Throughout the dialogue between them, God refers to Isaac as Abraham's 'only son'. We know that Abraham had at least one other son at this time, however, Isaac was the son of the covenant, the son born through miraculous intervention, rather than by merely natural means. Abraham obeyed. He set his love for his child, and the powerful emotions he must have felt aside, and trusted God. The Lord had promised that from this boy a great nation would be established and Abraham believed Him. Abraham also showed that he believed God would resurrect the boy back to life, indeed, he told those traveling with them that both he and the boy would return alive.

He took his son, loaded the wood upon his back and went to the top of the mountain. There he bound his son, took a knife, and proceeded to obey the One who had given him this boy. At the last moment God stopped him, but only after Abraham showed that he was willing to give that which was most precious to him, the child who would continue his name. God provided a male ram to be sacrificed in place of Isaac, for the Lord never intended a child sacrifice to be made.

There would be a human sacrifice on this mountain in the future. God would send His 'only Son', He would carry the wood on His back to the place of death, He would be bound, and He would give His perfect life for the sins of all humanity. All those who, like Abraham, put their absolute trust in Him, placing Him before family, possessions, or any other thing, and believing in the power of the resurrection, are given a declaration of perfection, a covenant in Christ's blood sacrifice which covers their sin.

The Law: The Impossible Requirements of Perfection

Most people I meet know something about the Biblical law contained in the Ten Commandments. They may even fool themselves into thinking that they have kept these commandments and, in doing so, are 'good' people. Do not steal, do not murder and do not commit adultery. Many claim to have kept these, and pat themselves on the back, even considering themselves to have a good case before God that they should be ranked alongside those who make it into paradise. What they, and most people, fail to fully understand is that God's laws actually reveal the standard to which a person would need to attain in order to be granted access to the place where only perfection can exist. God's laws reveal the character of God, the perfection of God, particularly in terms of sinlessness.

For those who wish to 'make it on their own', the law of God sets down the requirements. There are approximately 613 laws given through Moses, and failure to keep all means failure to attain perfection. In simple terms, the Law of God outlines the requirements, the person considers the options, and his/her actions reflect their willingness and capability of compliance. 'Do not steal' is an easy example. We are faced with a temptation, we consider the implications and make a decision to comply or not. But in reality, the Law requires something which is quite frankly impossible for humanity. It requires an overwhelming desire to obey God's will in every aspect of our lives, an absolute joyful surrender to His will. Do we have the power to achieve such a requirement?

Take for example the law of coveting, 'you shall not covet'. To covet is to earnestly desire what someone else has. We covet those things which we lack, we covet those things which we believe will fulfill an emptiness we have inside, and our coveting brings emotions of envy, jealousy and despair. It is easy to judge our level of obedience from black and white commandments like 'do not steal', but quite another thing to admit to ourselves the many times we earnestly desire what is not ours to have. The problem lies within us. We were created to be in a perfect, unhindered relationship with God. Sin broke that relationship and separated us from the source of absolute fulfillment. We have an emptiness inside which longs to be filled with our Creator's love and Spirit, a longing which drives so many into the religions and practices we discussed in earlier chapters.

Our coveting stems from the very core of our sinful natures, from the empty place which only the Divine can fill. This emptiness has been described as a 'God shaped vacuum' and, consequently, can be filled only by that which perfectly fits the vacuum, namely, God Himself. Coveting is the deception we believe when we seek to fill God's place with what we think will satisfy us. The problem is genetic. We are born with this emptiness; the Bible refers to it as 'spiritual death', a term meaning spiritual separation from God, that legacy we inherited from Adam and Eve. We covet material things, falsely believing they will fill our emptiness, or plunge into forms of self-development trying to perfect that which can never be perfected in our own strength, for the satisfaction we seek can only be given by God Himself.

In short, only a person born into the world without this spiritual separation would have any chance of living God's Law perfectly. Did God know this when He gave Moses the Law. Of course He did. The Law was not given with the intention of showing us that we can keep it perfectly; it was given to make us see God's requirements, and help us admit that we are hopelessly unable to meet those requirements. It was also given to test whether or not we even have the desire to keep God's requirements, for the desire for perfection above all else, the desire to be reunited with the source of all perfection, is fundamental to eventually being united again with our Creator.

The Holiness of God

Of all the characteristics about God which can be known to humanity, the one most misunderstood and neglected is holiness. People are comfortable speaking of God's love, His mercy, His grace and forgiveness, but the reality of holiness threatens us like no other thing. I have just made a short list of Divine attributes and, on casual glance, one could make the mistake of reading them as individual parts. This is a grave error. The holiness of God is not an attribute; on the contrary, it is what defines God as God. God's holiness is the primary essence of who He is. His love, mercy, forgiveness and grace are never expressed, applied, or manifest outside of His fundamental essence of holiness. God's love is holy love, His grace is holy grace, in fact, all that He is and does flows from perfect holiness, for holiness defines Him.

Those who wish to consider holiness as simply one of the attributes of God end up with a god made in an image they are comfortable with, indeed, they can even avoid the issue of holiness completely. If, for example, we decide that love is the primary attribute of God, (as if we had the right to determine who He is), then we may deceive ourselves into believing that God judges sin from the perspective of a love which can compromise. How could an infinitely loving God punish sin? Such a question is totally ignorant of the holiness of God for it fails to see that perfect holiness demands perfectly holy justice. God's love, therefore, is always expressed through the primary essence of who He is, the 'Holy One'.

If we are ever to begin to understand perfection we must try somehow to comprehend the holiness of God, for apart from Him perfection does not exist. Where to begin? Perhaps a definition is a useful starting point.

The primary Biblical definition of holiness comes from a word meaning 'separate'. God is wholly and holy separate from us, He is 'other' than us, a unique being in whom 'there is no darkness at all' (1st John 1:5). The Apostle Paul tells us that 'God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see' (1 Timothy 6;15-16).

The disciple John walked with Jesus for three years. He heard the demons call Jesus 'the Holy One of God'. We don't know what John thought during those years, but we do know what he thought after about 30 years of reflection when he started writing for the Church.

John speaks of himself as the disciple Jesus loved, he tells of resting his head on Jesus chest. In his gospel, John presents to us a Jesus who is human, and yet 'other' than human, a person separate from all others. In his later life John was exiled to the Island of Patmos. It was here in the last years of his life that he received a vision of Jesus Christ as He is now and forever. His description is in the first chapter of Revelation. He describes Jesus as one 'like a son of man', and then in detail writes what Jesus looked like, ending with the phrase, 'His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance'.

John's reaction to the vision is incredibly important. He didn't run over to Jesus, throw his arms around Him and say, 'hey, it's great to see you again after so many years'. John tells us, 'when I saw Him, I fell at his feet as though dead'.

When the 'Holy One' was veiled in simple human flesh, John, although recognizing His holiness and 'otherness', was unafraid, was informal, although incredibly respectful. But when confronted with Christ in His natural manifestation of holiness, when the perfection of Christ was no longer veiled in human flesh, John's humanity could not stand before Him.

If this man who had known Jesus for three years fell at His feet as though dead, imagine the reaction of those who have failed to take into account the holiness of God in their false image of who He is? God is altogether separate from everything He has created. In fact, the only holiness that any created thing (such as the Ark of the Covenant) or being has, is through its direct contact and relationship with Him. Other than through the one who is 'other', there is no holiness at all.

There are several other extremely important things to understand about God's holiness before we can continue our discussion on perfection. The most frightening is the fact that God can never compromise with sin. In simple terms, God can never be anything other than absolutely holy. The power of that holiness is infinite, immeasurable ,and utterly impossible to dissolve or dilute in any way. Words are pathetically inadequate to make this point. In the past I have used the analogy of a nuclear reactor to explain God in His holiness. Anything impure coming into contact with the reactor is destroyed by the pure energy within it. But this analogy too, is pathetic. A nuclear reactor can be shut down, can be destroyed, but God is immortal, and the power of pure holiness which emanates from His essence can never be anything less than absolute.

For this reason we can begin to understand that imperfection cannot approach God and survive. For this reason also, we may begin to understand why God enclosed His holiness in a gold box within an area of the Jewish temple and called it the 'Holy of Holies', a place in which the High Priest could only approach once a year, and only after going through an incredibly detailed ceremony of purification. Perhaps now we can begin to understand why God veiled Himself in human flesh in the person of Jesus Christ in order to reveal Himself to us, and for this reason we can understand why 'no one has seen God' as He truly is and lived. Those prophets and biblical writers, who saw the holiness of God, saw through visions and dreams. In his vision of God, Isaiah records how the angelic creatures around His throne cover their eyes and cry out 'holy, holy, holy is the Lord'.

The Bible also tells a story about a man who, even though well-intentioned, died as a result of coming into direct contact with the holiness of God. The Ark of the Covenant, that beautiful box in which the presence of God dwelt, was being returned to Jerusalem. Israel's enemies wanted to get rid of it; some of them had decided to have a look inside and more than 50,000 of them died instantly. God had instructed that the Ark only be carried by placing poles through rings on its sides, thereby protecting human flesh from contact. It was put on a cart, probably using the poles, but on the journey, a journey in which there was a great celebration, Uzzah reached out his hands to save the Ark as he thought it was going to fall, and he died.

Couldn't God have compromised? Surely the all-powerful God could have withdrawn His holiness for a few seconds and let this well-intentioned man live? To entertain such a question is to miss the point entirely. God cannot compromise His holiness. It is who and what He is. Yes, that means that there are things that the all-powerful God cannot do. Sometimes people, thinking they are very clever, ask stupid questions like "could God create a rock so big He couldn't pick it up"? This is supposed to be a deeply profound philosophical question, but one I find infantile. There are things that God cannot do. Sinning is one, and compromising with sin is another. The very nature of holiness means that it is impossible for Him to compromise with sin.

So often I hear students and others make the statement that 'God lives in my heart'. These are not people who have experienced some kind of new birth or being filled with the Holy Spirit after conversion, rather, they are your average semi-religious person who has no idea of the impossibility of what they are saying. Can the holy presence of God just enter any human soul without that soul being in a state of perfection? The answer is no, an emphatic no! The sinful soul would be instantly destroyed by His holiness. Sure, we can say that the 'image of God' remains within every human being, but, unless the soul has been perfected, the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Holy Trinity, will not enter that place. God has, however, provided a way.

The Power of Sacrifice

From a human perspective, we may consider sin to be a momentary distraction, an old habit, or just having some fun. From God's perspective, sin is death; it is that thing which destroys His plan for humanity to experience His perfection. Sin absolutely opposes the entire reason for our existence, for we were created to know God as He is, to gaze upon infinite perfection, to experience His holiness, His immeasurable love, and limitless creativity for all eternity. If we never reach that goal and fulfill His plan for us, then in reality, we have lived just one grain of sand on the beach when God planned for us to live the entire beach, indeed an infinite number of beaches.

Once, while I was lecturing, a student suggested that living in heaven in perfection might be boring, that knowing everything would be boring. The comment fascinated me, as it so aptly described the limited understanding we all have of perfection and words like eternal and infinite. Let me try a somewhat pathetic example.

Most of us love traveling. We enjoy seeing new things, especially ancient wonders of the world; we love gorgeous tropical beaches, palm trees waving in a warm breeze, aqua blue oceans, delicious foods and new toys. I like programs like Startrek, for the simple reason that the idea of traveling thousands of light years through space and discovering things which were beyond my imagination excites me.

Scientists believe that our universe, although incredibly big in terms of our ability to travel and explore, is nonetheless finite. If we hold to a theory of Time Zero, a moment when the universe was tiny and expanded, then our universe has an edge, a border. Imagine then that God's kingdom lies beyond the borders of our universe, and this kingdom is infinite, borderless. Then add to the equation a God who is limitless in His creativity, a being who never runs out of original ideas, a God who can create things which we have no way of even beginning to understand. The apostle Paul, after seeing paradise, once wrote about what waits for Christians beyond the grave in words like these..."no eye has seen, no ear has heard and no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him". Boring?

My student hadn't even begun to consider the implications of perfection, for like him, all of us can only imagine from the perspective of the limited creation God has given us, albeit this world and universe are incredible.

God is a loving passionate Father. He desires that His children experience Him and all that He is. Sin destroys that possibility, for the holiness and justice of God can never compromise with His desire for us to know Him intimately for eternity. Our evaluation of sin is so pathetically inadequate because it fails to see the full intent and consequences. But God does. Sin is death, both physical and eternal; a death so all-encompassing that it can even destroy the loving desires of an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving God. No doubt some would disagree with that statement; especially those who lean towards Calvinist theology, for Calvinists believe that no creature can ever usurp the will or desires of our Creator.

The Bible disagrees. If a human being can never usurp the will of God then, logically, God is responsible for all human actions, both pure and sinful, and such a theology is radically opposed to Scripture and defamatory against the Lord. Calvin understood this, but he still insisted on God's sovereignty over-riding human responsibility, and was never able to solve the problem of making God responsible for sin, or answering the question of why God doesn't simply save all.

God has given us freedom to choose; without it, all creation is just a sham. Lucifer was given the freedom to choose and he fell. So have we. Sin is death, and death in biblical terms fundamentally means separation. We are born with the image of God, yet separated from His real presence, and without a cure we remain separated our entire lives, and for eternity. Separation from God is the absence of life; indeed, those who remain separated are like the walking dead, never beginning the life they were created for.

God had foreseen this dilemma, and His plan of Divine Education began with a man called Abraham as we previously discussed. The key question is this: 'How can an uncompromising, holy God find a way to start a process of healing the separation of death?' The answer is concerned with perfect justice, and the remedy in the institution of sacrifice as a punishment. Sin is a willful act of disobedience. For a holy and just God this act must be punished in order to be forgiven.

Most people understand the fundamental laws of cause and effect. Whatever we do has consequences, and consequences cannot be simply ignored. Sin brought absolute death, both on a physical and spiritual level, and only life can cancel the consequence of death. Even within our own distorted understanding of justice we see this principle. If, for example, a man murders a child after satisfying his lust, a powerful emotion within us demands justice. Sometimes we lock such people away, separating them from potential victims, but deep down many of us would shed no tears if such a person forfeited his life for the one he brutally took. God cannot compromise; He cannot reduce the sentence or give parole. Perfect justice requires a life for death, for only life is equal to death.

God taught this principle to the Jews about 1,200 years before the birth of Christ. Sinners brought an animal to a priest. While placing their hands on the animal's head as a symbol of participation, recognizing that the animal's death was substituting their own, the animal was killed, its life-blood given to pay for the death that sin had created. These sacrifices were performed year after year, teaching the purpose of sacrifice, and the people understood it. It was bloody, gory and incredibly humbling. For them, it motivated honest repentance, and taught us about the demands of Divine Justice and holiness. As the animal died its blood cleansed the one offering the sacrifice, and its blood got on his hands symbolizing that he was responsible for its death. This procedure of sacrifice under the Law was the Covenant God made with Israel.

The writer to the Hebrews (chapter 9) explains that the High Priest alone entered into the place in the center of the temple once a year to offer a sacrifice for the sins of Israel. This place, called the Holy of Holies, was surrounded by a thick curtain. The Ark of the Covenant, that beautifully carved chest which contained objects such as the Ten Commandments, and, more importantly, the very presence of God, stood in the center of the Holy of Holies. The High Priest went through an incredibly detailed ritual of preparation using blood covering various parts of his clothing and body, in order to protect him from the holiness of God.

Around his ankle was a rope. If some tiny detail had been forgotten or prepared incorrectly, he would be unprotected and die. If he didn't emerge within the right time, the other priests would drag his dead body out of the Holy of Holies without entering, for to enter was to invite certain death. God was teaching Israel that the holiness of God could never be compromised.

But these ceremonies had another purpose as well. They were a sign of what was to come. The life of a sheep or goat is not equal to the life of one made in God's image. Those animal sacrifices taught the principal of sacrifice, so that later, when a perfect sacrifice had been prepared, people would understand. For 1,200 years the Jews brought animals to the temple, they learned God's demand in that 'the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness' (Hebrews 9:22). Life for life and death for death! Perfect holiness demands perfect justice. The animals had to be spotless, without blemish, in the prime of their lives, the best of the flock.

The annual festival of celebrating Passover was full of symbols about the coming of the Messiah, in the same way as the first Passover had been. The Jews had been in Egypt for 400 years. Moses had been sent to bring them back to Israel, but the Pharaoh wouldn't let his slaves leave. God prepared the people for the night when his holy judgment would pass over Egypt. The Jews were ordered to choose a male lamb, a perfect lamb. They had to choose it four days before Passover. They had to kill it in the middle of the afternoon, attach it to a wooden spit using iron, they were not allowed to break any of its bones, and they had to place its blood on the top and sides of their doors.

Christ entered Jerusalem four days before He was crucified, He was without blemish, perfect in every way, He was crucified in the middle of the afternoon, He was attached to wood with iron and none of His bones were broken. His blood was shed for the forgiveness of sins, a perfect human sacrifice for sinful humanity, a life given to atone for the death brought about by sin.

God sacrificed Himself in the person of the Son of God, God the Son. God poured out His holy wrath against sin onto His Son, and the result was a human sacrifice, Jesus life's blood providing perfect justice. The old covenant under the law pointed forward, because, as Hebrews 10:1 says: "the law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming — not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship."

Only a perfect human sacrifice could cancel perfectly the absolute consequences of human sin, only a perfect human sacrifice could ever 'make perfect those who draw near to worship'. The question every person should be asking is 'how this sacrifice can be applied to my life personally'?

Chapter Five

Perfection in Christ

...because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.

Hebrews 10:14

A New Covenant

For 1,200 years God prepared the world and especially the Jewish people for His coming to live among us. The animal sacrifices taught a principle, but did not have the power to perfect the human soul. That would need a perfect human sacrifice. God prepared the world. He gave hundreds of detailed prophecies about His coming. He used the Greeks to prepare a language in which to present the writings of the New Testament, and philosophy to explain the deep concepts associated with the transformation of the human soul. He prepared the Rule of Law through the Romans and the possibility of freedom of movement for missionaries to take the message to the world and, when all was ready, He began to fulfill every prophecy to the letter.

Christ, the second person of the Triune God, veiled His deity within human flesh and entered into our world.

He came to reveal God to the world, that is, to reveal to us, without contradiction, the purpose of creation, the nature of God, and to teach us the very heart of our Creator. Jesus showed us the power of a life uncompromisingly committed to the will of God, the first human being ever to do so. In this He revealed the extent of human sin and the weakness of the sin nature to obey God's will. He also revealed the extent of God's love for us. His compassion knew no bounds. Often He labored tirelessly for hours, healing the sick, feeding the hungry and filling empty hearts with His words of life, explaining the difference between the selfish ego-centered ambitions of those who live under the rules of this world, and inspiring those who desire truth to reach for the Kingdom of Heaven.

He also came to establish a new covenant, to open a door that was barred by the holiness of God. He came to offer Himself, a perfect sacrifice for every sin ever committed, to offer His blood, His life, so that all who offered Him as their own sacrifice, being covered and protected by His precious blood, could enter the Holy of Holies. At the moment of His death on the cross, God established this new covenant, the curtain that surrounded the Holy of Holies was ripped from the top to the bottom and the door was opened to all. The scriptures explain His work as high priest this way:

When Christ came as high priest of the good things that are already here...he did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption...How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God...for this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant. (Hebrews 9)

Many people have little understanding about the difference between the old and new covenants. Sadly, in this politically correct world we live in, even those who should be teaching these things are afraid to speak of sacrifice, of being covered by the blood of Christ, and offering Him to the Father by faith for the forgiveness of sins. But the important thing to understand is this. I hear many people who have never met Jesus Christ say 'God lives in my heart' and even 'God lives in everyone's heart'. This is one of the most ridiculous statements a person can make, unless of course that person knows that they have personally offered Jesus Christ by faith for their sins and been born anew, born again.

Simply put, if the holy presence of God entered their hearts, without the protection of the blood of Christ, they would be dead before they hit the ground. As we have already discussed, sinful humanity cannot approach God without having gone through an incredibly intricate ritual of sacrifice (old covenant) or by being covered by the perfect blood of Christ (new covenant).

Under the old covenant, the Holy Spirit never entered the body of a person, for the blood of sheep, goats, and calves could not purify us, the only creatures made in God's image. If God had entered 'into their hearts' they would have died instantly. The new covenant was established with perfect human blood, the blood of Jesus Christ. When an individual offers Christ as their personal sacrifice for sin, believing that His sacrifice saves them, then, and only then, does the Holy Spirit of God, the very presence of infinite holiness, come to live within them. This is what it means to be 'born again', to be reborn by the Holy Spirit. Paul writes that these ones become the 'temple of the Holy Spirit'.

After the sacrifice of Christ on the cross the Holy Spirit left the temple in Jerusalem, left the Holy of Holies and took up residence within the bodies and souls of those who believed by faith in the new covenant in Christ's blood. The Jewish leaders refused to believe; they refused to stop offering animals in the Jerusalem temple and, in this, insulted God in the extreme. They refused to accept the new covenant, despite the 1,200 years of preparation, despite the prophecies that attested to the work of Christ, despite the scriptures that stated blatantly, 'the time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel (Jeremiah 31)'.

God used the Roman armies to destroy the temple, as Jesus had prophesied when He entered that city for the purpose of establishing the new covenant. He stopped on His way, sitting on a donkey and weeping, as He foresaw the Roman armies slaughtering the inhabitants and destroying the city. He wept because the majority of Jews at that time were so consumed by their own agenda for their Messiah, that they missed the point of Jesus coming to die.

Life through Death

Christ opened the door. The means God used, was to defeat death through death. We understand that sin results in death, in absolute separation from God. Yet Jesus was without sin, so why did He die? The Bible teaches that Jesus took upon Himself all the sins of the world. Every murder, every rape and violent act, every act of human rebellion, every theft, every desire of adultery, envy, coveting and jealousy, every lie and malicious gossip, every act of sexual immorality, of hatred and willful disobedience. He took them all, every one. And our sins killed Him. He took them willingly, consciously, for He knew that only He could perfectly satisfy the holy justice of God by taking the punishment of death upon Himself.

At the moment our sins were placed upon Him He experienced spiritual death, separation from the One He had been in perfect harmony with for all eternity. He never cried out when they flogged Him almost to death, ripping His body to shreds with a whip which contained metal and pottery shards. He never cried out when they beat Him, kicked Him and spat in His face. He never cried out when they stretched His arms wide and drove iron spikes through His wrists, and He remained silent as His feet were placed one on top of the other and a long nail driven through them.

But when He experienced spiritual death, He cried out; 'my God, my God, why have you forsaken me'.

There is a powerful lesson here for us. Jesus said, 'do not be afraid of those who kill your body but cannot destroy the soul. Rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell' (Mathew 10:28). We think that our physical sufferings are extreme, yet those who one day stand before the holiness of God, without perfection, will experience absolute separation from He who is the source of all life, and know for the first time the infinite measure of death.

In this life, even though we experience suffering, we are never completely separated from God, for we experience the beauty of His creation, we experience the spark of the Divine, we experience love, and we see evidence of who He is all around us (Romans 1:20). But eternal separation is to be separated from everything and anything which pertains to God; it is to be devoid of life itself, of love, of light, of color; it is to experience the real nature of sin and death.

Death is both our enemy and our ally. Most people fear death, for it is the unknown, a fear of non-existence or of having no control over one's destiny, or simply a fear of physical pain which can kill. But death, believe it or not, is the key to life, to a form of life which we dream of. Jesus opened the door to paradise and perfection through His death, but death in an eternal sense had no power over Him, for the sins He bore were not His own.

The Scriptures suggest that He went into a place called Tatarus, a word translated 'hell' in English, and then He rose from death on that Sunday morning which changed the world. He didn't rise from death with our sins upon Him, no; He left them in Hell where they belong. The Bible teaches, that those who reject God's offer of forgiveness of sins will go to Hades when they die. It also teaches that on the day when Christ judges the world, all who are in Hades will come out of that place and stand before Him.

It is impossible for us to imagine such a place or to imagine the scene of judgment. We are speaking of places beyond our three dimensional world, and the Scriptures use analogy and metaphor to describe these other-worldly places. To my limited understanding, the scenario goes something like this: those who die without forgiveness of sins will be sent to Hades, a place of torment and suffering.

We cannot understand the form of that suffering, as these ones bodies will still be laying in their graves. When Christ returns all people will be resurrected and those in Hades will stand before God in their body, however, they will not stand there sinless. Every sin and vile thing they have done was forgiven, and their sins were left in Hades. But they will wear their sin like a vile cloak when they face their Creator, for they refused to accept forgiveness and, therefore, their sin remains their own. It is as if they pick those sins up which Christ left there. On Judgement Day, sin will finally be destroyed forever when Hades and all its inhabitants are thrown into that place described as the 'Lake of Fire' (Revelation 20:13, 14).

Is death the enemy? It would appear so, and yet appearances can be deceptive. Jesus opened a door through His death and we can pass through that door as well. Jesus foretold, that if anyone would follow Him, they must also 'take up their cross'. I doubt that His listeners understood what He was talking about, for the cross is, and has always been, a symbol of death.

The Paradox of Perfection

We strive to make ourselves better, but death to self is the key to perfection. Buddha once said, "Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others". Buddha believed that we can find perfection on our own strength.

We think that all our self-development must bring us closer to the goal and to God, but instead, it usually produces thoughts of pride and drives us further away from the goal. We pat ourselves on the back for our discipline, we compare ourselves with those who would rather watch TV than meditate or do yoga. But if we are truly honest with ourselves, we are no closer to perfection than where we started from. If we are really honest, we know that we cannot stop sinning, it is a terminal disease that we all suffer from. Buddha couldn't either, so he simply ignored the problem. He said this: "A wise man, recognizing that the world is but an illusion, does not act as if it is real, so he escapes the suffering".

A 'wise man'? I don't think so. Death is not an illusion Mr. Buddha; suffering is not an illusion, Mr. Buddha. Both of them claimed your life.

In Hebrews 2:10 suffering is given as the key to perfection. It is said of Jesus that "in bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering." Christ perfected humanity through His suffering, through His death. His suffering was no illusion, it was brutal, uncompromising, and absolutely necessary to justify our sinfulness on our behalf, so that, "once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him" (Hebrews 5:9).

Christ commands us to "take up our cross". He means simply this: when we are sick to death of sin, we must come to the foot of the cross and surrender our old sinful life to Him. If we do this, our sins are nailed to that cross with Christ, they are buried with Christ, and we are resurrected as new creations in Him. Eternal life can begin now, indeed, if it doesn't begin in our lives before we die, we may almost certainly never experience it at all.

Perfection is a gift that only the Perfect One can give. It cannot be given to those who cling to their self-esteem and pride as if they were the greatest prizes. Perfection comes through utter surrender and brokenness, through seeing ourselves in the light of holiness. Yes, our struggles and strivings to make ourselves better are praiseworthy, but they too must come to the foot of the cross in surrender to Christ. The old self must die, it is corrupted beyond repair, a new life must be born; we must be born again, born anew.

In an analogical sense, we must offer the life of Jesus Christ to God in the same way the Jews offered a lamb. The blood of that lamb got on their hands, and the blood of Christ is also on our hands. If we humble ourselves and offer His life as punishment in our place, God will declare us to be perfected, the Holy Spirit will come to live in us, and we will be the temple of God. This is an existential experience which millions have come to know over the past two thousand years.

After this, a process of transformation can begin, not a process driven by our own wills, but a process directed and achieved by the Holy Spirit living within us. The Bible calls it sanctification, and yes, it means the process of being made perfect, being made into what we have been declared to be. But the beautiful thing is this: we are not sanctified in order to become perfect enough for God's Kingdom, we already have that. Indeed, we are citizens of heaven, guaranteed by the indwelling Holy Spirit. Nothing can ever take that away from us, for the old self is dead and buried.

We are sanctified in order that we may live for Christ now; live in the joy of the fruits the Holy Spirit produces in us as He transforms us into the likeness of the One who died in our place. All we have to do is allow Him to do His work. That means simply surrendering our wills to Him daily, giving Him permission to change us, for He never forces Himself on anyone.

Chapter Six

The Now and the Not Yet

Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Matthew 5:48

Perfection is a gift from God, a declaration to all who humbly repent, accept, confess and testify that Jesus Christ has died in their place as a sacrifice for sin. The Bible calls this 'justification'. It is a legal term meaning to be 'not guilty' of the sins we have willfully committed. Christ takes our guilt, our sin, and our punishment. Our part is to recognize this fact, repent of our willful sins and believe God's promise to declare us justified. We show our confidence in His promise by public confession and testimony. When we do this, a supernatural event takes place which cannot be described adequately in language, for its source is totally supernatural. Some speak of absolute freedom; many weep, both with remorse for their sins and joy for forgiveness.

These experiences are the effects of the Holy presence of God taking up residence within us in the form of the Holy Spirit. It is as if His very presence washes our souls. That God-shaped vacuum which was longing to be filled is suddenly overflowing with holy essence, the presence of the very Divine Nature. We feel as if we have finally come home, we suddenly understand what we were created to be, we receive a taste of the perfection we have been given by declaration, the perfection we will know absolutely, when He takes us to the place prepared for us.

His residency within us is permanent; given as a seal of salvation and a guarantee of our heavenly inheritance (Ephesians 1:13-14). The world never looks the same, its lure diminishes, for the desperate search is over and the soul feels absolutely satisfied. That emptiness we sought to fill with every worldly desire, every new relationship or material possession, is filled with the only One who can fill it, and the severed relationship we experienced as an insatiable hunger is renewed. This is not an intellectual ideal or another form of religion; rather, it is an existential reality.

This event is called 'new birth', being 'born again', for the old person has gone. No person can ever be the same after they have been filled with the Holy Spirit. Whilst before we were driven by an unsatisfied sin nature, now there lives within us another nature who implants His desires within our hearts. We call this event the 'now' of perfection. It is being cleansed and covered. When the holiness of God looks upon the newly-born Christian He sees that person covered by the life-saving blood of Christ, the Holiest of life essence which was shed for the sinner's justification. We are 'made perfect forever'. Nothing can take away that gift of God, for the gifts of God are irrevocable (Romans 11:29).

The 'not yet' part is the process of transformation. Not every person who claims to have been born again has experienced new birth. The Bible demands evidence. That evidence comes in the form of fruit which is produced in the Christian by the power of the Holy Spirit within them. If there is no fruit, then there was never the event of new birth. Event and process can never be separated. One does not exist without the other.

The Apostle Paul outlined this process in his letter to the Galatian Christians. In chapter five of that letter he gives a list of fruits which the Holy Spirit produces, including love, peace, joy, self-control, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and so on. In simple terms, he is describing the attributes of the One who lives within the true Christian. The Apostle Peter tells us that if these attributes are not being produced in increasing measure, then the person claiming to be born again should examine themselves to see if their faith is real or phony.

Why 'not yet'?

Because those who are born again and still living in this world have not yet been perfected completely, indeed, we are still earthbound. The completion happens when we leave this planet and enter the Kingdom of God. We can say it this way: new birth is when the Kingdom of God comes to live within us and we experience His perfection while in this world. When He takes us to be with Him, we then enter the Kingdom of God as whole beings with transformed bodies and clean souls, a people made holy so that we can enter the Holy place where the Holy One dwells in 'unapproachable light', to use a biblical expression. Christians often speak of being homesick for heaven. When we are born again, we get a taste of that perfection, a taste of what will one day be a total transformation in what we have been declared to be.

The Bible says that Christ has 'made perfect forever those who are being made holy'. The now and the not yet, made perfect and being made perfect; this is the experience of those who have been born again. This experience is available to every person who desires to be perfected, every person that is, who is sincere enough to recognize that without God's help they have no chance of even coming close to that goal. Humility opens the door to God's mercy; self-righteous pride slams it in our face.

Chapter Seven

Conclusions

Original sin is that thing about man which makes him capable of conceiving of his own perfection and incapable of achieving it.   
Reinhold Niebuhr

For the first twenty something years of my life I searched for perfection. Like most people, I believed that my own efforts were praiseworthy and that eventually I would reach my goal.

Thousands of hours of martial arts, exercises, yoga, meditation, philosophical books, debates and discussions, and at the end of it I saw an arrogant and empty fool staring back at me in the mirror. I may as well have been trying to fly to the moon on a broomstick, for perfection is an impossible goal for the imperfect. Most people just don't bother to try; others simply try to fill life with every pleasure available or, alternatively, grab hold of a man-made religion which is powerless to change them, yet promises eternal rewards for human effort.

There are hundreds of such religions and cults which offer a mixture of self-disciplinary techniques, mysteries of higher knowledge for the elite, secrets from the past, bloodless diets, esoteric feelings, and the like. In the western world, God is often portrayed as a loving grandfather who couldn't possibly destroy any of His creatures, and the idea that all roads lead to heaven is sold in various packages and new age philosophies. People create God in the image which best suits their own agenda and then convince themselves, and others, that they are right. Those who insist that God has revealed Himself through the Bible are considered old-fashioned, bigoted and behind the times. The Bible itself predicts this very situation.

The truth is clear to those who really want to find it, and God promises all who seek Him diligently will find that very truth (Hebrews 11:6). Jesus claimed to be the 'resurrection and the life'. He made the claim moments before he brought a man back to life who'd been in his tomb for four days. Jesus claimed to be the light of life. He made the claim moments before healing a man who'd been born blind. Jesus claimed that He would rise again on the third day, and five hundred people saw Him. But perhaps the greatest evidence that God has given us is the continual process of transformation in the lives of ordinary people who have encountered the risen Jesus Christ, and been born anew over the past two thousand years.

Yes, I do understand and acknowledge that the history of the 'Christian' church is full of hypocrisy, murder and bloodshed; however, I do not consider institutions or individuals who practice or support forced religion, inquisitions, crusades, or other such practices, to be Christian in any way. The Bible clearly teaches, that unless a person walks as Christ Himself walked, then they are not in Christ or Christ in them. Don't deny the reality of Christ because so many frauds have claimed to act on His behalf. These people murdered any who opposed their power; they banned the reading of the Bible for 500 years and perverted the truth. However, the Holy Spirit brought renewal of truth, the printing press brought the Scriptures to millions, and the event and process of true salvation was made known again to those who were living in fear of the so-called 'church'.

You will not find the event and process of perfection within Islam, in New Age religion, in Scientology or any other religion, cult or philosophy. You will meet people for whom these man-made religions have helped, meet people who have even been changed to some degree through making the efforts which these demand, but you will never find what only God can give, for only the perfect blood of Christ can make a person perfect, and God will not compromise His eternal plan for humanity. None of the founders of religions, cults, or religious movements ever demonstrated perfection, none except the One who claimed to be the very Son of God. He proved His claims, He fulfilled His mission, He revealed God to us, and then gave His life that we might be perfected in Him.

The Perfect One became human so that humanity might become perfect. We were created to be perfect, created to be holy, created to be as He is for all eternity; more than just an image, more than just a painting, but rather as Christ Himself, transformed into His likeness.

Can a person know perfection? The answer is yes. We can experience the taste of perfect holiness at new birth, experience the perfecting process of transformation throughout our lives, and eventually spend eternity experiencing the perfection of He who is the very essence of all that is perfect.

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Also by Steve Copland:

Mary Magdalene: A Woman Who Loved

1st Century Trilogy - Book One

Throughout history there has been much written about Mary of Magdala, most of it legend and speculation, some of it derogatory. The Bible, however, gives us many clues as to the character, personality and contributions this first century woman made to the ministry of Christ and the early church. This book is, in many ways, a tribute to a woman whose life was dramatically changed by the one she came to love more than life itself.

Mary Magdalene was a woman whose life circumstances led her from demonic possession and prostitution to being the first witness of the greatest event in world history. In an attempt to reconstruct her life, this book demonstrates her struggle as she confronts the patriarchal traditions embedded in first century culture, the hypocritical practice of condemning only one gender in adultery, her transformation as she finds grace, freedom and real love in her encounter with Christ, and her being chosen as 'the apostle to the apostles'.

This novel takes the reader into the first century. It delves into the personal lives of lepers, cripples and the sight impaired; it goes on a journey from the battlefields of ancient Germania to Jerusalem with two Roman soldiers who end up initiated into the cult of Mithraism; it explores the fears, prejudices and arrogance of the religious rulers of Israel, and the ambitions of Judas Iscariot; it portrays the everyday struggles of first century people in an occupied land; it looks behind the scenes at a woman who is seduced into committing adultery and used to test Jesus, and brings them all together beneath the cross of Jesus Christ.

Simon and Simon: Passion and Power

Simon and Simon is the second novel of the 1st century trilogy. It features two men born just a few miles apart whose lives are dramatically different, Simon Peter and Simon Magus. Simon Peter's life weaves through the story and is contrasted with Magus, the one known as 'Simon the Sorcerer'. The latter travels to Kashmir and studies the Rig Veda in search of individual power. He returns to Israel where he meets Simon Peter. Both end up in Rome: one levitates for Nero, the other is crucified.

Triarius is a Roman soldier married for only a few months and sent to the Northern frontier. His wife is pregnant when he leaves and believed to be carrying a son, if the witch was correct. He sends orders to dispose of the child if the hag is mistaken. His wife gives birth to a daughter, 'Triaria', and secretly raises the child while her husband is away, not knowing if he will return. He does, and discovers the child's existence, and...well that would be telling the story.

Religion: History and Mystery

War, Power, Greed, Jihad, Inquisition, Crusades and Extremists, all words we associate with religion. Shamans, priests, prophets and magicians, servants of the gods, mediums of power, or frauds? 22 religions, examined, exposed and deciphered.

Religion: History and Mystery explores the ancient and modern religions which have dominated the world for 6000 years, exposes the contradictions, uncovers the mysteries, and reveals the truth of who and what we are.

Slug: The Reluctant Butterfly

Slug wants to fly, but he doesn't want to die. Slug is a beautiful story about our reluctance to allow God to transform us into what He wants us to become. Slug learns through his mistakes that many will lead us down wrong paths, but obedience to our Creator brings complete joy and fulfillment. Grunt, a crow and central character in the story, discovers the pitfalls of peer pressure, the power of forgiveness, and eventual self acceptance in his new life. (Children ages 7-11)

Time for Truth: A Challenge to Skeptics

Time for truth challenges skeptics to take a fresh look at the supernatural qualities of the Bible. Issues such as the existence of God, creation/evolution, evil and suffering are discussed, and the reader is taken on a logical, scientific and inspiring walk through world history as a story of God's plan for humanity. This book has been used in various forms since 1985 when it was first written for a man dying of cancer. He refused to speak of God. He was an ardent atheist; however, he had a spiritual transformation just three days before he died and witnessed of his faith in Christ.

Just Because: The Story of Salvation for Children

Just Because takes children on an exciting and inspirational journey through the Bible. It gives them an exciting bird's-eye-view of God's plan unfolding as He prepares the world for the coming of Jesus Christ. Throughout the story Satan is watching out for the child who will "crush his head," (Genesis 3) and he endeavors to stop God's plan from unfolding. The reader knows who that special child is, and the story especially opens up the insights that point to Jesus throughout the Old Testament. Each chapter takes about twenty minutes to read and ends with a short Biblical lesson. Children love it.

Contact details for conference, seminar and book enquiries:

http://www.stevecopland.com

copland56@yahoo.co.nz

Facebook: Steve Copland

New Life Church Kiev Ukraine

Steve Copland is a self-supported missionary serving the Lord in Ukraine since 2003. He lectures on Biblical Studies and Church History at the International Christian University and serves in the pastoral team at New Life evangelical church.
