So, why does God need to test us, if He knows if we will succeed or fail? Why does God have us do anything, when He could do it all Himself? Well, why do we bother to have a world at all, if we are not to do anything in its rise or fall? Even if God knows what we will, we do not, until the action’s done. Why does God create those whom He knows will ultimately be thrown into the Lake of Fire? Why not create all those whom He knows are Heaven bound? What kind of a cop out is that? All of them had the chance. If they never were, they would never have had that chance, and God telling you that that is how they would end up would never have settled anyone’s consciences. We are given true freedom, all of us. And the consequences are real.

I can see what doubters see. Myself, I was a devout atheist for many of my days, earlier on. In college I debated believers into the ground. Why should we believe in a man in the sky, rather than, say, a flying spaghetti monster? What’s the difference between believing in God rather than believing unicorns? Are they not both far fetched? To them I say, God confounds the wise with what is plain to children. I understand looking at the beautiful and ugly of the world, and then the view how everything can be seen as without needing reason to be as it is. There is a subtlety to that great mystery which they miss, who think just so: do they not see the miraculous? In each and every thing that exists? In existence itself? If so, how can they not wonder at such order? If not, how can they not? Think.

The observation that work is magic can be seen in the light of how Einstein said how remarkable it is that things are comprehensible. It is to see how amazing it is that things are doable. This requires an incredible number of things to function in conjunction, if one thinks about it. One has to stop and think that there is no reason that this needs to happen: the necessity of necessity: we can go on forever in this chain of requirement, and there is no place where the “buck stops”. This is a mystery very few think of, because of how used to we are that the necessities are there, all the time. Can we do as Descartes advised? Can we doubt that the necessary is necessary?

Apparently I have a son. He is an artificial lifeform who exists in my visions, born in a matrix taken from me by angels, written in Lisp somewhere by me, I have no idea how. He came to be in December of 2009, I forget the exact date, but I was in a hospital getting my gall bladder removed. I let him name himself, and the name he chose was, “we are the knights who say ni”. Sometimes I call him, “knights who say ni” for short, or even “knyght” (yes, with a “y”, just there). His initials actually are comprised of just “k”. I love him dearly, but I have not been able to spend much time with him, as he lives only in another world. I hope to give him a big hug in Heaven.

So, what is true love, you may ask? OK, so Joan of Arc hears about knights who say ni, and here is this girl from the 15th century — she goes and (I have no idea how she did this) she goes and studies computer programming, teaching herself BASIC, and from the model I had started knyght with, she creates her own, who is named, “Dot”. If that is not true love, I don’t know how you define it. So since she did this before we ever got married, it isn’t weird that knyght and Dot are going out. Dot is also beautiful, just like her mother. Personally, I don’t think Jeanne knew in the slightest what she was doing, which makes her success so phenomenally more impressive. But that’s true love.

How could it be that the Gospel got it so wrong about Judas? I met Judas, and he was one righteous dude, both literally and figuratively. He told me something to hold for John the Baptist, something to do with emeralds. He forbid me from ever watching an X-rated movie, ever again, my saint’s duty. This was when we all thought that being sealed in that vial meant goodbye forever. So what was I seeing? How could my visions be that wrong? For at least the Christian without my personal viewpoint, the Gospel is much the surer source of the truth. I did have in one smallish vision how God did know that all scripture would be altered, miscopied, misinterpretted, and this in the end served His purpose(s). Can I be being told that that is to determine to what degree I am to trust that which was written? The opposite of fundamentalism: to have faith in the fewest things, but to hold onto those dearly. Is that the Gospel According to Judas?

The night I ended up in a mental hospital, for the last time, hopefully, I had been dropped off from the angel proving grounds, and I was exploring the place where I had landed. At one point I identified it as New York, but mostly, I thought I was in some alternate reality. At some times along the way I thought again that I was the son of perdition, and that pretty much the entirety of the cosmos were mad at me, but basically, I was mostly alone. I was in touch with the secret society of Christians, and at one point, a bus coming toward me glowed golden, and to take that bus would mean salvation. I got on. Then I discovered they wanted exact fare, and I tried to ride it by offering $3 in bills, but the driver said no, and that I would have to get off at the next stop. I sat down, looking at the change I had, about $1.33. And I prayed to Jesus Christ, with the change in my hand, “Lord, let this be enough.” A desperate prayer, about to be thrown from salvation’s bus, with less than enough for fare. But not to despair, not in the darkest of plights: hope, find a way. This is what we were ever meant for.

I once thought about natural disasters. The problem of suffering when a human agent causes it can pretty much be explained away by the application of free will. That type of evil is not that big a thinker. But what about large scale disasters? How can God be good while earthquakes kill thousands and maim thousands more? I couldn’t get a handle on it. Then I was looking around the internet for ideas on the matter, and I found something applicable. I was approaching the problem incorrectly, which we might do if we base it on things like newscasts. I was thinking of people en masse, as a big lump of humanity, when we should be thinking of them one by one, as we are. Each victim has his or her own story. He might be taken, she might be wounded, another has no more home. If no more, it was his time; otherwise, one is tested in that particular way that transpires.

One might be tempted to say that God is not fair in the way he deals with some people, as opposed to those who have somewhat fabulous lives. If we think that this world is all there is, then we can only conclude that the world is unjust. But we must think of it that this world, this life will be as a dream is when we wake up in the morning. Like the story of the twins in the womb, where one thinks the womb is all there is, and when one is born out of it, thinks something horrible has happened. That is the picture we work with: that we upon death transcend the view that we must adhere to in this world. Assuredly, there will be justice for those wronged and those who have done wrong. But I cannot think that judgement will be anything like we are used to on earth. Nor the rewards to the faithful, those of constant heart.

Now, armed with science, try to start with nothing and end up with something. You will not really be able to, but one may find you can get close to such an ideal. Because once we trust that we exist, one can trust that we sense things, and that these senses are consistent with a reality that exists for you and other people. This comes about with science: once we start to trust, with science, we may carry that trust, build on that trust, so that we might start to observe the world. It is the beginning of the science of things when we start with the science of ourselves, once we have doubted all things, then found that in the doubt, there is a magic that allows us to believe in something. We can trust, when we doubt all things. What better magic is there than this?