Where is my Honorary Doctorate?

I keep inhaling psalms. I finally got past 37, which was a horror to memorize. Since then, luckily, I have been drawn to shorter psalms. This morning, I had to make a list so that when I went through my memorized psalms to firm them up, I would not forget any. I think this is complete: 1, 2, 3, 4, 23, 34, 37, 63, 101. Number 15 will be under control tomorrow.

This stuff works. Lessons from the psalms keep popping into my head during the day.

Psalm 15 is a tough one to swallow. Apparently, in order to be acceptable to God, you have to satisfy these conditions: “He that backbiteth not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his neighbour, nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbour.” Oh, man. What is there left for me to write about? I can’t backbite and reproach? There goes my hobby. I may sell my keyboard.

I came across this today, in Psalm 41:

“Blessed is he that considereth the poor: the LORD will deliver him in time of trouble.

The LORD will preserve him, and keep him alive; and he shall be blessed upon the earth: and thou wilt not deliver him unto the will of his enemies.

The LORD will strengthen him upon the bed of languishing: thou wilt make all his bed in his sickness.

Non-Christians talk a lot about karma. They say you suffer for your bad deeds, and that you are eventually rewarded for your good deeds. Some people say this proves Jesus and Buddha are interchangeable, because it sounds sort of like what Jesus said. They’re a hundred percent wrong. This is not the way Christianity works. We hope to be rewarded for our good deeds, but we beg–and expect–to be spared punishment for our bad deeds. In fact, Jesus bore a great deal of our punishment. But to a great extent, we do reap what we sow. More and more, I realize that you can’t expect good things to happen to you, unless you, yourself, do good things. And the good things you do should be similar in nature to the good things you want done for you. Many ministers say these things, and I think they’re right.

Jews apparently believe this, too. I was talking to Aaron about it. They believe you apply the principle in prayer. Instead of just asking for things, you search your heart and your memory, to see if you have anything of which to repent. You look to your own history and heart to see if you have brought misfortune on yourself. And if you want a certain type of blessing, you try to give it to others. For example, if you need healing, you might make a gift to a charity that provides medical services.

If you think about it, this must explain the Golden Rule. If you do unto others as you would have them do unto you, presumably, you are sowing good seed. You are laying the groundwork for God to treat you well. If you show mercy, you get it. If you show generosity, you will receive it. Generally, I mean. No Christian gets through life without some mistreatment.

Before Jesus, the Jews were already saying, “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor.” I believe some modern Jews say this is the same as the Golden Rule, which says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” But is it? Under the first rule, it’s wrong to harm people. The second obligates you to help people, proactively. It’s a greater requirement. In Luke 10, The priest who passed by on the other side (supposedly to avoid becoming ceremonially unclean) satisfied the first rule, but not the second, which the Good Samaritan obeyed.

According to Luke 10, the Jews didn’t stop at the first rule; they also said we were to love our neighbors as ourselves. This combines the two rules. Ordinarily, you don’t want to harm yourself, and you also want to help yourself.

The above lines from Psalm 41 are consistent with this principle. I would say they amount to a promise, and you can find the same promise expressed differently elsewhere in both testaments.

I am thinking about this a lot these days. I am getting pretty old, and I have not done much for humanity. And I have done stupid things, which I thought were just, which probably invited problems into my life.

I think we are supposed to be like tubes through which God pumps his blessings into the world. After all, the Bible calls him “the many-breasted God.” Maybe we all need to make a more conscious effort to be empathetic.

Last night, it occurred to me that the church was losing opportunities by failing to be empathetic. For example, we have terrible problems with PETA these days. These people have gone completely nuts, persecuting and even injuring human beings because of the way we treat animals. The Bible tells us to be kind to animals, yet we abuse them very badly on our farms, and the church doesn’t say a word about it. PETA, with its extremism and links to anti-Christian leftism, is probably our punishment. We opened the door, by ignoring the need. And we’re headed in the same direction, with the Nigerian “child witch” nonsense. The church caused the problem, the church is not fixing it, and the world is starting to notice the little abandoned children who wander around in the open, looking for food in ditches.

I don’t know how I ended up here; I only intended to say how happy I was that the memorization was going well.