What do we look like in heaven?

In the book of 1 Corinthians, chapter 15, Paul talks about the resurrection and the resurrected body. In verses 35 and following, he states that our heavenly bodies will be different from our natural bodies, with some stark contrasts. Whereas our earthly bodies are characterized by mortality (being susceptible to death), our resurrected bodies will be characterized by immortality (not susceptible to death). Likewise, while our earthly bodies are susceptible to decay (corruption), they will become incorruptible (1 Corinthians 15:53). Also, where our natural bodies are prone to weakness (ask anyone who has reached 40 years of age or older), our resurrected bodies will be characterized by strength (verse 43).

Another comparison is that now we have a natural body, but then we will have a spiritual body. This probably doesn’t mean that we will be like ghosts possessing no body at all and floating around unable to interact with things around us. After all, verse 49 states that we will have a body like Jesus’ resurrected body (see also 1 John 3:2). And Jesus, after His resurrection, told them to touch Him and to watch Him eat, demonstrating that He was not merely a spirit (Luke 24:37-43). Rather, it’s more likely that just as a natural body is fitted for this present life in our physical universe, the spiritual body will be that which will best suits us for the eternal existence we are destined for in our eternal abode. Jesus’ resurrected body was capable of entering locked rooms at will (John 20:19). Our earthly body limits us in ways (and/or dimensions) that our spiritual body will not.

First Corinthians 15:43also describes the transformation from “sown in dishonor” to “raised in glory.” Philippians 3:21says that Jesus “will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body.” Our decaying bodies are described with the word “dishonor” because they bear the mark of the results of sin. We can all picture the lungs of one who has ruined his health through smoking, or a brain that is no longer able to form complete thoughts because of drug abuse. In the same way, the decaying physical body is the direct result of man’s sinfulness. Had there been no sin, there would be no decay and death (1 Corinthians 15:56). But God, through Christ’s transforming power, is able to raise up His children in Christ with new glorious bodies, being completely free from the ravages of sin and possessing the glory of Christ instead.

To summarize, we are not told exactly what we will look like in the next life, what age we will appear to be, or if we will look thin or fat. But, while many believe we will bear some resemblance to what we look like now, we do know that in whatever ways our appearance or health has been altered as a result of sin (whether because of overeating or not eating right, hereditary malformations, injuries, aging, etc.), these traits will not be carried over into our appearance in the next life. More importantly, the sin nature, inherited from Adam (Romans 5:12) will no longer be with us, for we will be made after the holiness of Christ (1 John 3:2).

Resenting and Being Resented.

Before i decided to write a post like this. I had to think long and hard about how i would convey the subject matter, as in its current state, it is very personal to my own ongoing private experiences.

I have been on this earth 30 years this year and i can exclusively reveal to you that up until now i have never had anyone tell me that they resent being around me, in my company, with me, beside me…whatever you call it. I just haven't been accepting of such people before.

Thus, after dealing with such a statement, i have to address it carefully in all that is supposed to entail for someone who is on the receiving end of it.

I would like to say firstly that this is a, sort of, open letter any person who decides to have those feelings about someone. I hope that something in this entry will resonate with the mind and understand that such wretched feelings can only be satisfied in a conclusive self destruct button being pressed and hope of amending that part of your heart with someone will take a long time and a bitter battle of your soul.

Not for the first time this week have i had to deal with people treating me in a way that shows they have clearly inconsiderate, harsh and deliberately hurtful damaged souls.

I know, first hand, what it is like to resent someone and to be resented. 

I want to use my blog to explore these feelings and get them of my chest, pretty much before i explode. I truly hope it helps you.

So lets first discuss resentment. When i do this, i want to talk you through each part of it carefully so we all stay on the same page. 

Whilst i'm doing this, i sit smack bang in the middle of the aura of resentment that has been recently made known to me therefore you will understand how difficult it is for me to do. 

It pleases me a lot to see so many international visitors to this blog and within a short space of time. Thank you. There will be something for you here to enjoy, i hope and i'm happy for you all to continue emailing me your thoughts.  So here goes...

Resentment is defined as an emotion felt by a person who believes that someone or something has harmed his/her well being on intention. It is the state of believing that someone else is responsible for your misery.

Now. That covers a great many things.

Resentment can also be because of someones own self-obsessed desire to have everything without setting a goal or a clear path in which to get it. Clearly, if you want something so much and aren't able to get it as quickly as you'd hoped, then resentment would creep in.

When someone tells you they resent you, then it is not unfair for you to ask what they expected of you or your relationship with them in the first place, is it?

Did they expect you to provide?
Did they expect you, in some form or other, to aid them in their ultimate goal?
Were you just a pawn in the game, a step on the ladder, a bridge over troubled water?
Did they intend in their own mind to make something work, without thinking?

This hits really closely.

There is another caveat to resentment thats worth exploring at this point: jealousy.

Have you, in your life, achieved something that someone else wishes they'd had achieved?
Have you made progress and they haven't? Have you had a life goal and took the next step, but they haven't? Do you plan ahead, but they don't? 

If any of those scenarios is the case, then you could very well be dealing with Jealous Resentment. 

If someone has jealous resentment against you, then it will gradually eat away at their heart and spirit until they enclose themselves in blankets of unhappiness. There is no point in being around them, and you must leave them to the wide world and the Lord to deal with.

"Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamour and slander be put away from you, along with all malice."

There is a very good reason why, in at least 43 verses in the New Testament, that God tells us some form of the above statement. 

As with all of Gods words, they are both for the person who is resentful, and for the person who is recipient of the resentment. So what advice does it have?

It tells us that, within a spiritual person, or someone who clings to a faith of whatever kind, there is no place for bitterness or anger, or wrath and that is because its destructive nature is so obvious.

To address the recipient (and thus to myself):

You will feel all of these things as scripture details. You will feel a sharp desire to hate, or be angry. Being told someone resents you is a difficult matter to deal with. Sometimes its the shards of your heart that make you feel sharp and broken enough that you want to hurt someone.

Take my advice.

I have been told i'm resented, i've been lied to, i have been undercut, i've been used, and i've been given false hope. And i'm having to learn the hard way to realise that i should stop blaming and start forgiving. I have. Even yet, those who resent you will really try to make you feel worthless, and yet remain in your life. Whatever happens to my situation, it will be blameless and as white as snow. There is just sometimes a time to move and a time to stay. Show courage in your plight against feeling resented by returning love, and honour, and forgiveness, and give and give and give and give a thousand times over like God has done with you.

You're telling me to keep loving, and giving, and forgiving someone who tells me they resent me? Are you joking?

No, i'm not. Im genuinely not. Down the line, when you reflect back on the time with this person or people, what do you want to be able to see? Do you want to be able to look into a glimpse of your own self showing hate, disrespect and dishonour? Of-course you don't because that will automatically feed further debilitating feelings. Give and do not deny for these are the keys you need to move on.

To address the person who resents:

You are in a place of your own choosing. Everything about you, within you, around you and for you is because you chose it. When you make yourself happy its because you make yourself happy. When you make yourself miserable, it is because you have done so to yourself. 

It is time to stop being so lazy as to automatically translate your self-dissapointment and lack of motivation to something or someone else. Be the bigger person. 

Is the life you are leading so bad? Do you have air in your lungs and sight in your eyes? Do you have god-given talents that you can explore? Do you have the capacity to love? 

And then let me talk of the person or the thing you resent? What have they (or it) done to you that is so bad. So bad that you have to place, with all your heart, the heaviness of your self-centred disappointment at their door? Do they really deserve that from you?

There is a channel out of this situation for you, and it won't be easy. You have to get an idea of what you need and then work for it, without restraint. Be it a job, a person, a reality, a place, a situation, a friend…whatever. I'm telling you that you are going to have to work at it without restraint and without second thought.

And one other piece of advice for you, both of you: Walking away and leaving a resenting feeling there will only cause more pain to you in the future. Imagine that day when you are in your different life, with your different person, and slowly and slowly in you gut the resentment for something or someone around you begins to grow again. 

Thats because you never dealt with it. You ran from it. And that, my friend, will be the biggest mistake you will ever make.

I bid the farewell. The seat is now vacant.

A Story of Learning

I haven't ever, nor would i ever, hide the fact that i am a Christian. That means, in the very basic terms, that i hope to apply the message of Jesus Christ to my life. 

More often than not, i find myself terribly unsuccessful at this titanic task. I find myself angry, lacking humility, lacking spirit, faith, hope, joy…all the things that i've read should be an outpouring of the holy spirit. 

There is a clear and substantial difference between being a Christian and being a non-christian. Whenever you do something that is contrary to the holy spirit, you are aggrieved. By this, i mean you feel a sensitive loss and separation from God. Even if it is only for a moment, and then you have to pray it away.

But although i confess to worshipping and loving and adoring only Jesus. I have a respectful understanding of the teachings of the wisest that have walked the earth. Their finite wisdom in comparison to Christs infinite wisdom is still bewildering and thought provoking. I wanted to tell you a story about Buddha - the central figure of the Buddhist faith.

I feel such delightful affinity with Buddhism and its followers. Because it is has not broken into mainstream religious circles it still remains a peaceful, calming and resourceful source of enlightenment for its followers without having to think about its terrible deeds of the past. Buddhism is by far, the worlds most 'peaceful' religion in terms of its actual historical acts. 

I will say this though: Jesus (not his church) is undoubtedly the most peaceful, honourable, loving, caring, free spirited, loyal, magical, sacrificial being to have ever walked this earth. That is, he is God incarnate and his peace far surpasses anything we can humanly comprehend. I just can't say the same about his church.

So, lets get on with the story….

It all started one day, when Buddha was walking through a small village. A very angry and rude young man came up and began insulting him.

"You have no right teaching others," he shouted. "You are as stupid as everyone else. You are nothing but a fake."

Buddha was not upset by these insults. Instead he asked the young man "Tell me, if you buy a gift for someone, and that person does not take it, to whom does the gift belong?"

The man was surprised to be asked such a strange question and answered, "It would belong to me, because I bought the gift."

The Buddha smiled and said, "That is correct. And it is exactly the same with your anger. If you become angry with me and I do not get insulted, then the anger falls back on you. You are then the only one who becomes unhappy, not me. All you have done is hurt yourself."

"If you want to stop hurting yourself, you must get rid of your anger and become loving instead. When you hate others, you yourself become unhappy. But when you love others, everyone is happy."

The young man listened closely to these wise words of the Buddha. "You are right, o Enlightened One, "he said. "Please teach me the path of love. I wish to become your follower."

The Buddha answered kindly, "Of course. I teach anyone who truly wants to learn. Come with me."

How amazing is that? For a split second you could imagine the word 'Buddha' being replaced by 'Christ'.
You wouldn't be wrong either, because there is a similar story in the Holy Bible.

But i wanted to think about the statements the angry young man said to Buddha. I imagine he had maybe just fallen out or had a serious argument with one of his friends or family. He had walked out of his house and just as he happens to be storming down the street he notices this peaceful man, walking whilst looking to the sky, as tough his stride was a float through mid air. The man's calmness would make him instantly eligible for attack.

Think about the way street attacks happen these days. Some peaceful lady walking her dog in the park gets raped by an angry and lonely soul. A young black man is shot in the head in the middle of the street by an angry white police man. A spurned Israeli spits on the face of a homeless palestinian. A King, so enraged, whips a young gay man to death in front of everyone. 

This is with the same discord and hatred that this young man would have in his heart. 

So he storms up to buddha and says his piece. Lets look at the choices buddha could have made by his response

1. He could have shut him down and shouted back.
2. He could have beat him up.
3. He could have walked the other way and acknowledged he was frightened.

But he didn't do any of those. He stood still and asked a question. He showed a curious mind over a mind ready for conflict. He goes on to analogically tell him about how giving a gift to someone who doesn't want it means that it is still the persons gift who bought it originally. And so it goes with Anger and hate.

Our world is full of it. Anger, hate, discord, disrespect. Its full of it. And in order to mitigate it, we exude more anger, hate, discord and disrespect. Look at how we have dealt with Iraq. That is a prime example of how unleashing hate only makes you more hated. When you are more hated, you are attacked more and so the wheel turns. 

This world cannot be changed if we allow the same world to influence us. Those who wish to live in a different world must understand that there is a greater purpose than those who abide by the worldly means. He who is in you, the higher self, the mighty power, the crowning spirit, is greater than the spirit of this world that lives to breathe only hate for poverty and love of money. Hate for peace, and love for war. Hate for modesty, and love for sexuality. Hate for love and Love of power. 

Are you one of the world? If not, then make the change in your life and that will influence the rest.

Are we really this thick?

Now, this is a pretty impressive week if you take everything that's happened in Scottish politics into account. I'm not just talking about that smashing tartan blazer that frequents the First Ministers fine bodice now and again. I'm talking about..

Labour, walking through the halls of Westminster, long frock coats and top hatted to the max, and voting against the working man by enabling the Conservative party to agree another £30bn of austerity cuts. Remarkable how far people fall.

Then, and yes there is a then, not only do they say to the working man: 'Hold on, we are going to punish you further with austerity' the also say 'We agree that 100 billion quid of taxpayers cash is spent on the renewal of Trident. 

(For those reading from abroad, Trident is the UK's weapons of mass destruction. Aptly named of course from the trident carried by the Lord of the Sea, Posidon. Some sort of meaning in there somewhere?)

So we've got a) punish the poor and b) take more money of the poor for our WMD system thats utterly pointless.

And then. And this is the biggie.

The Smith Commission proposal gets rehashed by the tories to mean a much watered down, sort of soggy chip version of what was actually proposed. And what was actually proposed was much less anyway than the 'Federalism' and 'Home rule' promised by yer man, Gordon Brown.

And then. Oh yes. There is more.
There seems to be a wee game going on between the Tories and Labour again. Forget Jim Murphys sadistic dulcet vocal tone over a video promoting change. Take a glance at these two leaflets.

You really couldn't make it up. The SNP lets Milliband in according to The Scottish Conservatives, but according to Big Murphy, voting for the SNP is a vote for David Cameron. 

Someone, someday, is going to have to ask these two to stop kissing and start talking.

A Dog and Forgiveness.

One of the most easily identifiable attributes of my dog Jack is his ability to forgive.  Dogs in general; animals more broadly, are able to uniquely dispel this trait much better than we humans can.

Since about Christmas Eve, he has taken this new lease of life in trying to bark at people to frighten them. The postman. A police man, shop owner, Santa, wains. Generally everyone that is higher and wider than him.

Nobody suffers more, by the way, than my mothers dog (who was previously mine) Ben who seems to have to tolerate Jacks unwavering showers of biting, clenching and play fights, much to his dismay.

Clearly, I had to step in on many of these occasions and teach Jack how a dog should be behaving at his time and stage in his life. He is, of-course, still a puppy but these are the best times to learn him and buying his a muzzle was the first safe step I could take without having to take discipline to hitting or slapping him. Both of which I hate doing.

I will say at this point that I *have* had to do this because his behavior has gotten so out of control at points.

That really brings me back to forgiveness and his ability to forgive. When he is restrained, he clearly feels bad. He sulks and moans that he can’t have the freedom of his canine counterparts, even if it is just for 20 minutes.

I read somewhere that in order for him to understand that this is discipline the person who placed the muzzle on him should take it off. This sends a message to the dog of exactly who is in charge and won't seem like one is punishing, the other rescuing. 

What, though, would be the after effects on us, if one of our nearest and dearest put a muzzle on us and restrained us because we were ‘having fun’. How would we feel about them afterwards?

In a human case, and I can only speak from my own human experience, would find it really difficult not to be aggrieved or what to retaliate, or seriously question their love for me. Would you?

But what does Jack do? He wags his tail, runs back to me to lick my face and wants to play all over again albeit in a less rigorous manner.

Forgives.

In the bible, Forgiveness is the headlining reason Jesus, as God incarnate, came to earth. In order to ensure that Humans, in our feeble ways, could return to the Lord forgiven of every misdemeanor we have offended of him.

Daniel 9:9

‘The Lord our God is merciful and forgiving, even though we have rebelled against him’

We are acutely aware of how difficult we find it to process the ability to forgive someone who says something or does something in a negative way towards us.

In those brief moments after I have disciplined my dog, I often wonder what life would be like if we are all just a little bit more like Jack.

The Art of Benevolence

There is too many ways to consider how to open your first blog post. My previous sites had, unfortunatly, transformed from the a-lining multi-viewed, transcendent blog site to this: in all its incapable novelty, a one viewer accolade of my musings.

I hope that whoever reads the stuff that i write here will gain some perspective as to what i really mean to say. There are too many wonderful blogs out there so i will have to deal with the consequences of my articles being deliberatly passed in the streets of this bulky, congested highway of digitality that is the internet.

When considering a subject for my first article, which i contemplated meerly a moment ago, i thought that i should bring the last few strains of my inner positivity some well needed oxygen from the calming surface of a melancholy ocean.

There are no ways for me to express how it feels to be able to use my brain to write again. This has been a terrible year and a brilliant year all at the same time. Infact, i would say it has been my most learned yet. But i lost myself along the way. That is often the risk we take when we try to master the art of benevolence. Sometimes trying to please everybody and make those around you happy is the one, sure fire way, of bringing down your own person, and in turn, rather dramatically, allowing your soul to be carried off in a barriage of inner protests. 

Mastering Benevolence - at this point i will clarify what i mean by Benevolence. I mean kindness, well spiritedness, openess, munificence. -  is difficult because it doesn't naturally occur in humanity and if you'd have read my old website you'd have seen that it was precisely these qualities that Jesus, the Christ, prompted us to get control of. It doesn't matter what you care about, or what you love, there always has to be effort behind it. 

Where people are very good at mastering benevolence, is through the unconditional love of others. I find that i cope very well with benevolence with parents and siblings but as the ring of familial influence extends further and further away it becomes a little harder.

Its not because we don't want to. Its deffinatly not because we don't want to. I think its entirely the opposite. Its because we have to constantly think about it. We dont autmoatically love unconditionally except with those who mothered and brothered and fathered and sistered us. Its just not that easy. 

Benevolence actually sets you free. So many of the attitudes of this fallen world are chains to the arms of the spirited. Feelings like anger, depression, mistrust, hate that push us into a cage with a door without key. 

If i think back to the most benevolent people in my life, and i'd hope you'd think about those in your life too, you'll start to see a trend. You'll see that actions spoke louder than their words. You'll see that there was more to them than just a saying. This is the true art of attaining benevolence. Having action behind what you say and take it deeper than the surface.