Post by johnbc on Nov 13, 2020 22:31:14 GMT
The human soul has a series of aspirations that end up not being fulfilled during its existence, and all of them end up accumulating on top of each other in a place of the soul that is immortal. While we are alive, part of these aspirations refers to things that we can do with our bodies, such as eating a candy. To do this, we have hands to catch it, eyes to see it and mouth to eat it. When we finally eat it, our desire is satisfied, the cycle closes and we finally rest. What we should note is that these aspirations are not in our body itself, but in our soul. And people tend to think that when they die, all those inclinations will go away. But that’s not how the land lies.
What happens to us then when we die? One time we will wake up. However, it is not our body that wakes up, as it remains in the place where everyone else is. But who then wakes up? It is us, our soul. So, in that first moment, we will not even notice that we have passed away, as it will be as if we had woken up, like every day, after a good night’s sleep. However, we will start to notice some strange things, like talking and people not listening to us. Then, it may be that we remember someone who is not present with us in the place where we wake up, and suddenly that person will appear to us. When that happens, we’ll say, “Wow! What happened? How bizarre! What is this?”. After a while, this starts to cause us a certain fear and despair, because soon after we will realize: “Wow, look at me lying there, pale and stinking. It is my body that is there!”. In that moment we will be really desperate. At the height of this despair, we will pass out.
When we wake up from this fainting, we will no longer be seeing anything from this world or the place we are in, we will not be listening to anyone else, we will move but we will not be able to see our hand, we will try to grab our chest and we will not feel it in any way. In short, we will be in total and complete darkness, and some processes will begin.
For now, the details of that process don’t matter. What we need to know is that if the bulk of our soul’s movements depended on the body to be satiated, we will be in trouble. For example, there are people who like sweet coffee. The appreciation of sweet coffee depends on the body, because it is necessary that we have hands, tongue, brain and all the sensory apparatus so that we can experience it sensibly. So, we must imagine the situation of someone who is in total darkness and who feels loneliness and the desire to drink
“It is so difficult here in the darkness! If I had at least a cup of coffee, at least a cigarette now, it would relieve me! If my brother, my mother and my wife were here it wouldn’t be that bad”. It is this: desires will arise and that is a fact. But how to quench them?
What happens to us when we have a great desire and realize that there is no way to satisfy it? We feel torment. For example: if someone’s child has a deadly disease and its treatment is very expensive, very long and very complicated. Of course, the child’s father will want him to heal, however, in that situation it will be impossible. What will this parent feel? There are some liars who would say: “Everything is at peace. What God has decided is what God has decided, and if He has decided it is because it is good for me”. Was this really how we would feel in such a situation? Would that be how the feelings in our chest would stay? No! We would start to get distressed, desperate, afraid and angry.
Only, in the midst of all this avalanche of negative feelings, there would still be a hint of hope. People, in very difficult situations, always cling to the hope that something can happen that will change the situation. When we are dead, and if we are in the situation we are describing, we will not even know if the things that can satisfy our desires still exist, because all we will see is a black, a darkness. It will be as if we are now with our eyes closed, however, we will feel that our eyes are open.
We must emphasize that we are assuming the situation of someone who will certainly be condemned. Of course, before reaching that level of despair, there will be heavenly alternatives for the person, but this will be granted if he is Catholic. If not, when you wake up from the faintness we mentioned, you will already begin to feel all that we are describing.
Then, we will reach that state and the following will happen: from fear and despair we will move to another state. When we are in fear and despair, there is still a fund of hope in us, we still think that there is a possibility that we will be able to escape. However, as said, from these states we will pass to another one, in which we will conclude: “There is no escape!”. Here in the terrestrial world, what happens when we are in a bad situation and find that we have no way out? Fear and despair become anger and hatred.
For example: imagine that there is a bandit near our homes, and that we are afraid that he will assault us. In that first moment, we would think: “I have a good lock on the door, and, furthermore, I have an image of Christ on it, not to mention the fact that I am praying that nothing bad will happen to me. Besides, I am not a bad person, so nothing will happen to me”. However, despite hope, fear is present in this situation, as we would not leave at two in the morning without locking the door. Only suppose that the worst happened: the thief entered our houses, beat everyone, raped our daughters, robbed us and left. And now, would we still feel fear and despair? No, we would feel hate! Feelings of fear and despair become present when there is both a possibility of suffering an evil and a possibility of escaping it. But when this evil has already happened and we have no way out, what we feel is hate!
When we die, if we are really condemned to Hell and after we pass those first emotional states, what we will begin to feel is just hatred. The world will be over for us, we will still exist and there will be no more solution to this problem. There is no point in us being able to return to the body, because neither this will happen nor the world will appear before us again. There will be no hope, and then we will be angry.
But we will still have another problem, because the dynamics of hatred is the following: when we do not find an object towards which to direct this feeling, it multiplies. If we felt hatred while the thief was in our homes, at least we could punch him. If this were done, the problem would be resolved and the feeling would go away. However, in Hell there will be no objects on which we can vent our anger. Who or what will we take revenge on? We will not be able to reverse hatred, because there will be no object to vent to it.
And then what will happen? Anger will grow more and more. And then? Imagine this: when we hate everything and a person reminds us of something good we have been through in our lives, how do we react? Suppose that in this emotional state, someone said to us: “Remember your childhood. Wasn’t cool?”. What would we answer? This: “No, I hate this, I hate children!”. Why would we react that way? Because the objects that this memory refers to have become lost goods, at least momentarily, and then we begin to hate all the things we loved. However, in Hell, all the goods that we enjoy while we live will be completely lost, and so our hatred will never cease to exist and will spread throughout our soul, contaminating all our memories and good feelings that we previously had.
When this process is consolidated, we will be in Hell. After that, our anger would be so strong, but so strong, that it would resemble the nature of fire: it would light up the environment, and from there we would see Hell. When we saw it, the hate would only increase, because until then we would not know where we were, we would only feel our state inside. So, in a sense, it is correct to say that Hell is created by ourselves, but only in a certain sense, because in fact it is not.
And why are we condemned?
Most people who go to Hell, do not go because they are bad people. Bad is the devil. Most people are idiots and are condemned for being silly. When we say that, we are always asked: “What about the person we think was good in life, the person who helped others and who never harmed anyone? When she dies, will she go to Hell?”. However, our judgment is almost never certain when it comes to that! Who decides who is good or bad and who goes or not to Hell is God!
We were born with a responsibility in the world. We are not animals or stones, we are human beings, we are an image of God. That is why our existence must be based on this dignity. Whoever, not living for this dignity, says that he is good, in fact he is cursed, because he wasted this opportunity that is human existence! That person had the image of God within him, and what did he do with it? He threw trash on it! Spare me the goodness! That is why Christ says that the entrance to Hell is wide. If Hell was only for the bad guys, He would say: “Don’t worry, the road to Hell is not narrow”.
“…When I was presented before the Court of God, 60,000 people arrived at the same time from all over the world; of that number, three were saved for going to Purgatory, and everyone else was condemned…“. The number of those who are saved is small (https://www.olrl.org/snt_docs/fewness.shtml).
Most people we know are not mean; that is the smallest part of them. But the path of doom is not only for the bad, it is for the bad and the fools. What does He say at the end of the Sermon on the Mount? The following: “Whoever hears these words and practices them is compared to the wise and prudent man”. We must notice that He does not say “compared to the good man”. Jesus does not say that he who does not practice His words is compared to the evil man, but that he is compared to the foolish man who wasted his life. A foolish person — in this sense that we have just established — may have created a self-image of goodness for himself, and he may indeed have been a good one, however, if he did not follow God’s advice, if he did not put into practice the divine commandments, if he did not seek to dignify his own life in terms of what God expects of us, then that goodness was built on sand, and therefore will sink.
One might ask, “And what would kindness be for us?” We just talked! Is the person Catholic? So the first degree of goodness is making bread! Religion is very clear! “In Him was life, and life is the light of men”. Religion is clear. We make things up so we don’t have to practice it. We do with religion what the bad guys do with the law: criminals make excuses to be able to steal our money, and we make excuses for not practicing religion. But these excuses are being invented in our heads, and none of them solves the problem of our salvation!
When asked Christ which is the greatest of all commandments, He said: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength and love your neighbor as yourself”. The first thing He says is, “with all your strength”! Strength! However, people are not strong in religion. The second is: “with all your mind”! But in general, almost nobody meditates and tries to find out what is true and what is false about religion. Now, if someone is not doing these things, if he is not applying force, if he is not making an effort, if he is not using his own understanding to know more about religion, then he is not practicing it! It’s simple! How could a person say that he is fulfilling it if all his strength is directed towards health, to have money, to have friends and to get on the bus of salvation? It is impossible to apply all forces to more than one objective, as it is obvious that if someone has at least two primary objectives, his strength will be divided into two parts: one for each one. And yet, Jesus said “with all your strength” and not “with half your strength”.
The purpose of our existence, as we said, is to live a life equal to the image of God that we are. He created the human being for this. Nothing more, nothing less. If we are unable to live a life in this way, He still made things easier for us, because He allowed us to be saved just by producing our own spiritual bread. He doesn’t even require us to make wine! If we cannot even produce bread, we will have nothing to take to Heaven, and there will be nothing in us that could also exist in Paradise. If we looked in the mirror today, we would see that there is nothing in us that makes the people of Heaven want us to be with them. Now, if we were already producing clean bread, all the heavenly inhabitants would say, “That bread is cool!” Then, we would already have something that is heavenly, we would already have a living bread that came down from Heaven, and if it came down from Heaven, then it can exist and continue to be produced. This means that whoever produces spiritual bread will have a role to play in the heavenly world.
And why we are saved?
Now, let’s say that a certain person was pious, he belonged to the City of God, but he had some defects that he could not overcome. In fact, we are weak, and sometimes people may have put themselves on the right track, but either they didn’t have time to fully correct themselves, or they didn’t get it. However, suppose that such a person put himself on the right track, that he realized the need to make bread and started to work in that direction. As we said, he will not fall into that hellish state. This will not happen, because Christ and the saints will appear to him before that. And because he had a little bread He will recognize them. But, not knowing how to produce bread properly, this he must learn. Christ will put him in a place where he will learn, and He will teach him Himself. However, such teaching is more difficult and more painful than it would be on Earth. And why does Jesus do this? Because He promised, and He never gives less than He promises.
As we said, the person was here on Earth trying to produce bread, he was walking in that direction and, suddenly, he dies. What is going to happen? He can receive the bread that others have produced. The City of God is a very fair city and His children are not petty people. Both God and His children are magnanimous. And why can that person receive the bread that other people have produced? Because he had already firmly decided to practice religion, he was already looking for wheat, he was already trying to make flour, in short, he was already on the right track. For this reason, although he had not progressed much on this path, he already had a communion with the saints and already belonged to the heavenly community. And everyone who has bread and wine consecrated in that community can benefit it.
It is a fact that all cities have their drunks, but is it okay to let them starve for the simple fact of being drunk? Of course not. We should give them a handout, a sandwich, a blanket in the winter, etc. We must let them live. Kicking them out of town will not improve anyone’s life.
Let us say then that someone reads what we said here and from there decides: “I want bread, understand? Bread! The bread that Christ sends from Heaven is the one I want to learn to make, and this is the one I want to live in”. But, after reading this here, that someone is run over and dies. Now, God probes the kidneys and hearts, He knows what the guy had already determined to do, He knows what path the person was on: in that case, he joined the community. But what role does this individual play in the community? The role of doggy: he can sit beside the table and earn some crumbs. The dog is an animal that is used to eating vomit! When we give him steak, he eats it, vomits and then eats his own vomit. Everyone who has no religion is like a dog.
Of course, we are using symbolic language here. We know that no one is retarded enough to literally eat vomit. But spiritually this is more or less how it goes. So, when they throw up a lie about religion, the dog eats it right away. He doesn’t try to find out if it was bread or vomit. That’s how dogs act. Everything in the Bible is very important, and when He says “the dog”, what does he mean? What characterizes the dog? He’s not a bad animal, but he’s the animal with the least sense of taste that exists. For him, eating a steak with butter and garlic is as good as eating vomit or poop.
Well, the guy who just put himself on the right tracks, who firmly decided to produce and feed on bread, becomes a dog. If they throw vomit at him, he will eat, because he is used to treating vomiting and the most excellent food on the same level. So, as soon as we decide on that, we will be in the stage of gaining spiritual crumbs. We have to sit by the meal table without complaining about nothing.
However, those who have just converted usually say: “I went to church and I only saw hypocrites!” But what is he complaining about? He’s a dog! The hypocrite is at least a person, while the new convert is still a dog! What is he complaining about?! People have no sense. Do people know how to differentiate spiritual bread from spiritual vomit? No, they don’t know. So, your status is doggy. They should ask for their crumbs and be quiet.
If these little crumbs were really spiritual bread, then immediately these people are raised to the condition of beggars. But at this moment they are not yet faithful, they are not Christians at all! In the city of God, they become beggars, and the citizens of the celestial kingdom let them stay there even if they don’t bring anything positive. This permission is given only because beggars, after all, are of the same species as other citizens. Anyway, the person who has sometimes tasted crumbs of what bread is really about, will start to gain health and will decide to just eat clean wheat.
But where can we get this food? We have to go to a hundred different churches, and out of that number, we will find one or two which will have clean wheat. But when we find these two churches, we should not stop looking, because in fact we have to find about twenty. If someone does not know at least twenty good churches, then that person is not pious. Why? Because there are no buses to go to Heaven, but there are buses to go to church! There is a bus, a car, a taxi, a motorcycle, a bicycle, a skateboard, a leg!
Why should we look so hard? Because as we have no experience of the difference between bread and vomiting, we can easily get confused. We are not saying that it is out of malice, but rather lack of experience. So we have to visit many places: to get used to the difference between one thing and another. The person who only went to three churches and has already chosen one can only be kidding! This is wrong, as we must go to a couple of hundred different churches and spend a month in each one observing things well! Only then will we begin to learn to differentiate. In each of these churches we will eat the crumb they offer us. And after we have eaten in five different places holy bread crumbs, we will start to prefer some places to others. All of this is gradual, and it is like any and all learning: it is not easy and it is not sudden, it demands to love God with all our strength and with all our understanding.
What happens to us then when we die? One time we will wake up. However, it is not our body that wakes up, as it remains in the place where everyone else is. But who then wakes up? It is us, our soul. So, in that first moment, we will not even notice that we have passed away, as it will be as if we had woken up, like every day, after a good night’s sleep. However, we will start to notice some strange things, like talking and people not listening to us. Then, it may be that we remember someone who is not present with us in the place where we wake up, and suddenly that person will appear to us. When that happens, we’ll say, “Wow! What happened? How bizarre! What is this?”. After a while, this starts to cause us a certain fear and despair, because soon after we will realize: “Wow, look at me lying there, pale and stinking. It is my body that is there!”. In that moment we will be really desperate. At the height of this despair, we will pass out.
When we wake up from this fainting, we will no longer be seeing anything from this world or the place we are in, we will not be listening to anyone else, we will move but we will not be able to see our hand, we will try to grab our chest and we will not feel it in any way. In short, we will be in total and complete darkness, and some processes will begin.
For now, the details of that process don’t matter. What we need to know is that if the bulk of our soul’s movements depended on the body to be satiated, we will be in trouble. For example, there are people who like sweet coffee. The appreciation of sweet coffee depends on the body, because it is necessary that we have hands, tongue, brain and all the sensory apparatus so that we can experience it sensibly. So, we must imagine the situation of someone who is in total darkness and who feels loneliness and the desire to drink
“It is so difficult here in the darkness! If I had at least a cup of coffee, at least a cigarette now, it would relieve me! If my brother, my mother and my wife were here it wouldn’t be that bad”. It is this: desires will arise and that is a fact. But how to quench them?What happens to us when we have a great desire and realize that there is no way to satisfy it? We feel torment. For example: if someone’s child has a deadly disease and its treatment is very expensive, very long and very complicated. Of course, the child’s father will want him to heal, however, in that situation it will be impossible. What will this parent feel? There are some liars who would say: “Everything is at peace. What God has decided is what God has decided, and if He has decided it is because it is good for me”. Was this really how we would feel in such a situation? Would that be how the feelings in our chest would stay? No! We would start to get distressed, desperate, afraid and angry.
Only, in the midst of all this avalanche of negative feelings, there would still be a hint of hope. People, in very difficult situations, always cling to the hope that something can happen that will change the situation. When we are dead, and if we are in the situation we are describing, we will not even know if the things that can satisfy our desires still exist, because all we will see is a black, a darkness. It will be as if we are now with our eyes closed, however, we will feel that our eyes are open.
We must emphasize that we are assuming the situation of someone who will certainly be condemned. Of course, before reaching that level of despair, there will be heavenly alternatives for the person, but this will be granted if he is Catholic. If not, when you wake up from the faintness we mentioned, you will already begin to feel all that we are describing.
Then, we will reach that state and the following will happen: from fear and despair we will move to another state. When we are in fear and despair, there is still a fund of hope in us, we still think that there is a possibility that we will be able to escape. However, as said, from these states we will pass to another one, in which we will conclude: “There is no escape!”. Here in the terrestrial world, what happens when we are in a bad situation and find that we have no way out? Fear and despair become anger and hatred.
For example: imagine that there is a bandit near our homes, and that we are afraid that he will assault us. In that first moment, we would think: “I have a good lock on the door, and, furthermore, I have an image of Christ on it, not to mention the fact that I am praying that nothing bad will happen to me. Besides, I am not a bad person, so nothing will happen to me”. However, despite hope, fear is present in this situation, as we would not leave at two in the morning without locking the door. Only suppose that the worst happened: the thief entered our houses, beat everyone, raped our daughters, robbed us and left. And now, would we still feel fear and despair? No, we would feel hate! Feelings of fear and despair become present when there is both a possibility of suffering an evil and a possibility of escaping it. But when this evil has already happened and we have no way out, what we feel is hate!
When we die, if we are really condemned to Hell and after we pass those first emotional states, what we will begin to feel is just hatred. The world will be over for us, we will still exist and there will be no more solution to this problem. There is no point in us being able to return to the body, because neither this will happen nor the world will appear before us again. There will be no hope, and then we will be angry.
But we will still have another problem, because the dynamics of hatred is the following: when we do not find an object towards which to direct this feeling, it multiplies. If we felt hatred while the thief was in our homes, at least we could punch him. If this were done, the problem would be resolved and the feeling would go away. However, in Hell there will be no objects on which we can vent our anger. Who or what will we take revenge on? We will not be able to reverse hatred, because there will be no object to vent to it.
And then what will happen? Anger will grow more and more. And then? Imagine this: when we hate everything and a person reminds us of something good we have been through in our lives, how do we react? Suppose that in this emotional state, someone said to us: “Remember your childhood. Wasn’t cool?”. What would we answer? This: “No, I hate this, I hate children!”. Why would we react that way? Because the objects that this memory refers to have become lost goods, at least momentarily, and then we begin to hate all the things we loved. However, in Hell, all the goods that we enjoy while we live will be completely lost, and so our hatred will never cease to exist and will spread throughout our soul, contaminating all our memories and good feelings that we previously had.
When this process is consolidated, we will be in Hell. After that, our anger would be so strong, but so strong, that it would resemble the nature of fire: it would light up the environment, and from there we would see Hell. When we saw it, the hate would only increase, because until then we would not know where we were, we would only feel our state inside. So, in a sense, it is correct to say that Hell is created by ourselves, but only in a certain sense, because in fact it is not.
And why are we condemned?
Most people who go to Hell, do not go because they are bad people. Bad is the devil. Most people are idiots and are condemned for being silly. When we say that, we are always asked: “What about the person we think was good in life, the person who helped others and who never harmed anyone? When she dies, will she go to Hell?”. However, our judgment is almost never certain when it comes to that! Who decides who is good or bad and who goes or not to Hell is God!
We were born with a responsibility in the world. We are not animals or stones, we are human beings, we are an image of God. That is why our existence must be based on this dignity. Whoever, not living for this dignity, says that he is good, in fact he is cursed, because he wasted this opportunity that is human existence! That person had the image of God within him, and what did he do with it? He threw trash on it! Spare me the goodness! That is why Christ says that the entrance to Hell is wide. If Hell was only for the bad guys, He would say: “Don’t worry, the road to Hell is not narrow”.
“…When I was presented before the Court of God, 60,000 people arrived at the same time from all over the world; of that number, three were saved for going to Purgatory, and everyone else was condemned…“. The number of those who are saved is small (https://www.olrl.org/snt_docs/fewness.shtml).
Most people we know are not mean; that is the smallest part of them. But the path of doom is not only for the bad, it is for the bad and the fools. What does He say at the end of the Sermon on the Mount? The following: “Whoever hears these words and practices them is compared to the wise and prudent man”. We must notice that He does not say “compared to the good man”. Jesus does not say that he who does not practice His words is compared to the evil man, but that he is compared to the foolish man who wasted his life. A foolish person — in this sense that we have just established — may have created a self-image of goodness for himself, and he may indeed have been a good one, however, if he did not follow God’s advice, if he did not put into practice the divine commandments, if he did not seek to dignify his own life in terms of what God expects of us, then that goodness was built on sand, and therefore will sink.
One might ask, “And what would kindness be for us?” We just talked! Is the person Catholic? So the first degree of goodness is making bread! Religion is very clear! “In Him was life, and life is the light of men”. Religion is clear. We make things up so we don’t have to practice it. We do with religion what the bad guys do with the law: criminals make excuses to be able to steal our money, and we make excuses for not practicing religion. But these excuses are being invented in our heads, and none of them solves the problem of our salvation!
When asked Christ which is the greatest of all commandments, He said: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength and love your neighbor as yourself”. The first thing He says is, “with all your strength”! Strength! However, people are not strong in religion. The second is: “with all your mind”! But in general, almost nobody meditates and tries to find out what is true and what is false about religion. Now, if someone is not doing these things, if he is not applying force, if he is not making an effort, if he is not using his own understanding to know more about religion, then he is not practicing it! It’s simple! How could a person say that he is fulfilling it if all his strength is directed towards health, to have money, to have friends and to get on the bus of salvation? It is impossible to apply all forces to more than one objective, as it is obvious that if someone has at least two primary objectives, his strength will be divided into two parts: one for each one. And yet, Jesus said “with all your strength” and not “with half your strength”.
The purpose of our existence, as we said, is to live a life equal to the image of God that we are. He created the human being for this. Nothing more, nothing less. If we are unable to live a life in this way, He still made things easier for us, because He allowed us to be saved just by producing our own spiritual bread. He doesn’t even require us to make wine! If we cannot even produce bread, we will have nothing to take to Heaven, and there will be nothing in us that could also exist in Paradise. If we looked in the mirror today, we would see that there is nothing in us that makes the people of Heaven want us to be with them. Now, if we were already producing clean bread, all the heavenly inhabitants would say, “That bread is cool!” Then, we would already have something that is heavenly, we would already have a living bread that came down from Heaven, and if it came down from Heaven, then it can exist and continue to be produced. This means that whoever produces spiritual bread will have a role to play in the heavenly world.
And why we are saved?
Now, let’s say that a certain person was pious, he belonged to the City of God, but he had some defects that he could not overcome. In fact, we are weak, and sometimes people may have put themselves on the right track, but either they didn’t have time to fully correct themselves, or they didn’t get it. However, suppose that such a person put himself on the right track, that he realized the need to make bread and started to work in that direction. As we said, he will not fall into that hellish state. This will not happen, because Christ and the saints will appear to him before that. And because he had a little bread He will recognize them. But, not knowing how to produce bread properly, this he must learn. Christ will put him in a place where he will learn, and He will teach him Himself. However, such teaching is more difficult and more painful than it would be on Earth. And why does Jesus do this? Because He promised, and He never gives less than He promises.
As we said, the person was here on Earth trying to produce bread, he was walking in that direction and, suddenly, he dies. What is going to happen? He can receive the bread that others have produced. The City of God is a very fair city and His children are not petty people. Both God and His children are magnanimous. And why can that person receive the bread that other people have produced? Because he had already firmly decided to practice religion, he was already looking for wheat, he was already trying to make flour, in short, he was already on the right track. For this reason, although he had not progressed much on this path, he already had a communion with the saints and already belonged to the heavenly community. And everyone who has bread and wine consecrated in that community can benefit it.
It is a fact that all cities have their drunks, but is it okay to let them starve for the simple fact of being drunk? Of course not. We should give them a handout, a sandwich, a blanket in the winter, etc. We must let them live. Kicking them out of town will not improve anyone’s life.
Let us say then that someone reads what we said here and from there decides: “I want bread, understand? Bread! The bread that Christ sends from Heaven is the one I want to learn to make, and this is the one I want to live in”. But, after reading this here, that someone is run over and dies. Now, God probes the kidneys and hearts, He knows what the guy had already determined to do, He knows what path the person was on: in that case, he joined the community. But what role does this individual play in the community? The role of doggy: he can sit beside the table and earn some crumbs. The dog is an animal that is used to eating vomit! When we give him steak, he eats it, vomits and then eats his own vomit. Everyone who has no religion is like a dog.
Of course, we are using symbolic language here. We know that no one is retarded enough to literally eat vomit. But spiritually this is more or less how it goes. So, when they throw up a lie about religion, the dog eats it right away. He doesn’t try to find out if it was bread or vomit. That’s how dogs act. Everything in the Bible is very important, and when He says “the dog”, what does he mean? What characterizes the dog? He’s not a bad animal, but he’s the animal with the least sense of taste that exists. For him, eating a steak with butter and garlic is as good as eating vomit or poop.
Well, the guy who just put himself on the right tracks, who firmly decided to produce and feed on bread, becomes a dog. If they throw vomit at him, he will eat, because he is used to treating vomiting and the most excellent food on the same level. So, as soon as we decide on that, we will be in the stage of gaining spiritual crumbs. We have to sit by the meal table without complaining about nothing.
However, those who have just converted usually say: “I went to church and I only saw hypocrites!” But what is he complaining about? He’s a dog! The hypocrite is at least a person, while the new convert is still a dog! What is he complaining about?! People have no sense. Do people know how to differentiate spiritual bread from spiritual vomit? No, they don’t know. So, your status is doggy. They should ask for their crumbs and be quiet.
If these little crumbs were really spiritual bread, then immediately these people are raised to the condition of beggars. But at this moment they are not yet faithful, they are not Christians at all! In the city of God, they become beggars, and the citizens of the celestial kingdom let them stay there even if they don’t bring anything positive. This permission is given only because beggars, after all, are of the same species as other citizens. Anyway, the person who has sometimes tasted crumbs of what bread is really about, will start to gain health and will decide to just eat clean wheat.
But where can we get this food? We have to go to a hundred different churches, and out of that number, we will find one or two which will have clean wheat. But when we find these two churches, we should not stop looking, because in fact we have to find about twenty. If someone does not know at least twenty good churches, then that person is not pious. Why? Because there are no buses to go to Heaven, but there are buses to go to church! There is a bus, a car, a taxi, a motorcycle, a bicycle, a skateboard, a leg!
Why should we look so hard? Because as we have no experience of the difference between bread and vomiting, we can easily get confused. We are not saying that it is out of malice, but rather lack of experience. So we have to visit many places: to get used to the difference between one thing and another. The person who only went to three churches and has already chosen one can only be kidding! This is wrong, as we must go to a couple of hundred different churches and spend a month in each one observing things well! Only then will we begin to learn to differentiate. In each of these churches we will eat the crumb they offer us. And after we have eaten in five different places holy bread crumbs, we will start to prefer some places to others. All of this is gradual, and it is like any and all learning: it is not easy and it is not sudden, it demands to love God with all our strength and with all our understanding.
