Sacrifice

I have lots of thoughts about what the Biblical Universe is about today - they've kind of been brewing for a while.

'Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani'

This had to be. This feeling of being completely separated from God was a sacrifice on Jesus' part, He could have prevented it, but without making a sacrifice, how could Jesus (having been a man) come before God? Jesus knows that the rules are: God demands a sacrifice (no idea why - I don't buy that perfect stuff because after a sacrifice we are not perfect).

'Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani' is much better than Jesus telling one of the fellows being crucified with him that they would be in Heaven soon - in that verse there is no permanent loss or hardship, just temporary pain.

Maybe to go to Heaven we need to make a sacrifice in our lives. But not a sacrifice that we believe we should make. We should make a sacrifice that we believe we should not make. Do something that is truely altruistic - in my post of June 18 I wrote (check out http://blogsearch.google.com :-)):

So to me, "true altruism" is where one does something that one knows is against the ideal state one has in one's own mind of how things should be.

Perhaps this is what God is looking for? If we can do this just once then we are fit for Heaven?

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I don't like the word "righteous". It's too generic, vague, open to interpretation (ie. Immam's are righteous they would claim) - and well, it's darnright arrogant. If Heaven is full of smug (expletive deleted) - ah - "folks" then I'm not interested.

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Evidence for natural selection - I've been playing some chess on the server lately and I'm struck by the desire that people have to win. Or more accurately the desire that we people have to achieve what we set out to do. There is a chess variant called "loser's chess" the objective of which is to lose. If you lose the game then you win. People play that with a passion too. The instinctual desire to achieve one's aims is very very very strong - is it bred by natural selection? It strikes me that such a desire would indeed be a characteristic of "survival of the fittest". In the sacrifice suggested above, is God looking for us to recognize this urge and reject it? At least once?

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Good luck in your exercise or exorcise? We all get annoyed, the best remedy I have found is to let the emotion rise and wash over me, and then - smile and laugh out loud. When I do that I remember that the small thing I got annoyed over was pretty trivial compared to what life is really all about, and that we're all at different stages of learning along our respective paths.

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PS. Why would anyone call their kid "Dallas"? Poor guy :-)