A reply to Al

Hello Al,

Thanks for the reply.

You asked,

If we know God by our knowledge, what then becomes of the deaf, the blind and those who have no education or access to the knowledge you speak of?

Consider this for a moment, did you realize that What you think is knowledge is a conditioned response? You were trained to believe knowledge was education and therefore you are more susceptible to believe that should you get an education, that somehow you have attained knowledge or at least discredit one who has knowledge but no education.

We are going to do some logic exercises in order to address your concerns, and what you think is knowledge versus what knowledge is.

Can you have education without knowledge? No.
Can you have knowledge without education? Yes.
Therefore, knowledge is not education.

Again, we are being trained to think the way you do because those with knowledge do not want us to think, and so they retain the power over you. By associating knowledge with education, they have made knowledge unattainable to those who could not access education, and made silenced those who hav knowledge without education and have made an enemy of knowledge should education be unattainable and therefore reject knowledge and not the system that taught you this lie. What is this system? It is a spiritual system.

2 Corinthians 10:4-5
The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

You asked,
"If we are judges by good or bad knowledge are we living according to the knowledge of good and evil?"

This question has much too much presumption built into it, to be answered clearly and accurately. So let me break it down a little different.

By what standard do you judge good and evil?
-If it is your own, then you demonstrate you do not have knowledge, nor have you attained wisdom.
-If it is God's, then you demonstrate knowledge and have the beginning of wisdom.

How do you know God's standard when it comes to His judgment concerning good and evil? Was it not the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil since after disobeying God's command, did not God say, "Man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil."?

What do you think the knowledge of Good and Evil is?

From what I have read by a small number of people believe, they believe it is, "sin", "evil", "law", etc. Just like Adam and Eve who were ashamed because now there was naked, the question remains, who told you that the tree of knowledge of good and evil was sin, evil and the law? By what knowledge did you recieve this conclusion?

You see before you can ever rejection knowledge, you must first evaluate why you rejected it in the first place. Was it the truth or was it a lie? Most things which is called knowledge is a lie, and knowledge which is a lie, is not knowledge at all.

If I were to tell you 1+1=2, this is testable and known to be true. For the person who understands 1+1=2, they have a knowledge of basic mathematics.

If I were to tell you 1+1=3, this is testable and known to be false. For the person who understands 1+1=3, they have no knowledge of basic mathematics.

Does this make sense to you?

Titus 1:1-2
Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ for the faith of God's elect and the knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness— a faith and knowledge resting on the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time.

You said and asked
"Emotional reasons are unstable and easy changed" - Is not knowledge also like this?

Knowledge is not like emotion. Unless of course, you believed a lie, falsehood, error, and call it knowledge, but knowledge which is true cannot change no matter what.

So back to our math example: 1+1=2 no matter what you do to it, it remains constant; however, if I believed 1+1=3, I cannot prove this to be any knowledge since the answer will change when it is tested; and if I do test it, I will understand and obtain the knowledge 1+1=2 0according to the truth, which was the original and only knowledge there was to begin with.

Now let us attach emotion to this equation. If I am only happy if 1+1=3, and I find out that 1+1=2, I will not happy anymore; so if I value emotional peace, then to make myself happy I deceive myself to believe 1+1=3 ignoring knowledge and deluding myself with a lie.

I am using a human argument here, remember there is a spiritual application to this and it should be starting to sink in that emotional reasons are not a reason to believe in anything. Because emotions are not reasons for anything true and accurate.

You say,
"It is largely accepted that emotion follows thought so incorrect thinking is a generally diagnosed cause of depression. This would agree with the general hypothoses of your argument of having a focus on correct knowledge over a emotional focus. but is that what are you really trying to say?"

Yes, incorrect thinking not only causes depression but also a number of dysfunctional and incorrect behaviors. Like in the example of my value of emotional comfort over the truth.

You may think 'what does it matter that I believe 1+1=3 as long as I was happy.' that is the beginning of a long web of self-destructive behaviors. It starts out, innocently enough but if we begin to sacrifice the truth in favor of emotional satisfaction or comfort, you find yourself unable to know evil from good, and begin to do evil because it makes you happy and truth begins to be the enemy, and you will reject it to maintain your emotional priority. This is the degradation of morals and the deep and steep decent into immorality, no matter how small it is. When a person value emotional comfort over the facts, they are headed for destruction.

That is what I have said from the beginning. You cannot have a correct thought process without knowledge of what is correct and to obtain this knowledge it will cause little suffering but God`s love will be made complete in you because of it and you will be a house built upon the rock, unmoved and steadfast.

I said,
"The only way you do not fear the unknown, is to know"

You replied,
"What about faith? If I knew everything I wouldnt need to trust God for anything."

Then you do not know what faith is, faith is not lack of knowledge.

Hebrews 11:1 "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see."

Remember earlier when I said you were being trained and conditioned by a system that does not want you to think. You may not realize it, but that system also taught you what faith was.

Can you sure and certain of what you do not know? No.
Can you be sure and certain of what we hope for? Yes.
Can we be sure and certain of what we don't see? Yes.

Consider why this is! The only reason you can sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see, is based on knowledge and that is conditioned on the knowledge who God is and knowing that when He says something it will come to pass.

Just look at the soldier, whom Jesus said had the greatest faith He had ever known.

Matthew 8:9-11
For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, 'Go,' and he goes; and that one, 'Come,' and he comes. I say to my servant, 'Do this,' and he does it."

When Jesus heard this, he was astonished and said to those following him, "I tell you the truth, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith."

You say,
"Also would you agree that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with fear. It is a natural response given for our benefit, like everything though it can be manipulated and misused and if we focus on that and not on God then that will be our dominant experience."

You reveal something in your response which is very interesting... you said it is, "NATURAL" to fear. Who told you this, and by what knowledge did you accept this conclusion?

What do you think fear is?

What are you afraid of?

Romans 8:13-16
For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.

2 Timothy 1:7 For God did not give us a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.

Do not make the mistake that wisdom is fear, or fear is wisdom, my friend. If you were taught to be afraid of strangers, you will never find a friend; but if you were taught to be wise concerning strangers, you will find many friends. Fear may be a natural reaction, but God rebukes those who live by it.

You said,
"and with power comes confidence and to make sure that we are balanced, we cap it off with love." - Cap it off with love? wouldnt it be a more correct scriptualy based thesis that we are to put love first and base our other endevours from this foundation?

Are you sure?

2 Peter 1:1-8
To those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours: Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness add knowledge; and to knowledge add self-control; and to self-control add perseverance; and to perseverance add godliness; and to godliness add brotherly kindness; and [finally] to brotherly kindness add love>. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So although I think you thought you had an "Aha" moment with how I phrased that, it was purposeful with what I said. There was no error in what I said. You cannot have love and not knowledge, and if you have knowledge without love, then what you have is not knowledge at all but a lie.

By this time, you should start to know what knowledge is....if not, I will answer the following personal experiences you stated.

You said,
People focused on Power and Confidence have done more hurtful things to me than I'd care to remember.

Did I say anything about being focused on power and confidence, but I will tell you the truth, those who focus on power and confidence, neither knowledge or love.

You said,
My most hurtful experience with a Church minister was with a guy who would read his Bible and pray for hours a day and boasted of getting through the bible usually 2 times a year. He had a lot of scripually based knowledge but displayed very little Love.

Like the people focused on power and confidence, it is most possible that this minister neither had knowledge or love; but there is one other party involved in this observation, how can you be hurt by someone who think had lots of knowledge?

In any case, there is far more to talk about, and too much to write concerning it. Thanks for the questions, take the answers as you will.