Children of Heaven

If you hold your thumbnail up to an empty patch of night sky, you are covering up thousands of galaxies. It's called the ultra deep field. A galaxy might have a billion stars. There are more stars than there ever were or are humans on this planet. There is an Almighty God who is the Creator of all this.

If you look up at the night sky and see a blank and cold place where man is alone in a vast dark sea, you really have no reason to read any further. Or perhaps you have a desperate need to do so When I look up at the night sky, I see a place of stunning beauty, full of worlds made perfect, full of harmonious human civilization. The cosmos is inhabited; the Society of God Himself. There are layers to it. There is no shortage of material resources. God is the God of Abundance. And there are laws on which the universe revolves. Some of them are counter-intuitive. For example: if you give you will get back more than you gave.

Here's another one: 38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:

39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also.

41 And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.

42 Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.

43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.

44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that^fhate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
-- Matthew 5

This means that if you do this supra-human thing (do something nice for someone who has done something terrible to you) you will tap into a deeper law. Being a "child of your Father in Heaven" means that you are acting like Him, punching through human judgment and into the cosmos itself. I have heard erroneously before that someone who gave up on revenge/justice was being weak; that this was a law designed for someone to lose their power. The opposite is true. There is a distance between an evil deed done to me and the good thing that I do back, on the one hand a scale going into negative numbers for the despicableness of the deed and into the positive numbers for the reaction to that deed. The difference between the two is the spiritual power that I receive. It can be a small thing: a man cuts you off on the freeway, and you say "God bless you brother!" All the way up to abuse of police power.

I am reminded of a quote from the movie Ghandi: "I am asking you to fight! To fight against their anger, not to provoke it. We will not strike a blow, but we will receive them. And through our pain we will make them see their injustice, and it will hurt -- as all fighting hurts. But we cannot lose. We cannot. They may torture my body, break my bones, even kill me. Then, they will have my dead body -- not my obedience."

Here is a rather large audio file with the whole speech (note this is from a movie!)

While this principle applies generally as to the appropriate response when someone screws you over, I have found it especially helpful in working out the injustice done to my workers through the income tax.

There are only two places in the Gospels, to my knowledge, where there is reference to taxes. The first is well-known:
Matthew 22
17 Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not?

18 But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites?

19 Shew me the tribute money. And they brought unto him a penny.

20 And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription?

21 They say unto him, Caesar’s. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.

The second is more telling and ties in with the deeper law of the Cosmos:

Matthew 17

24 And when they were come to Capernaum, they that received tribute money came to Peter, and said, Doth not your master pay tribute?

25 He saith, Yes. And when he was come into the house, Jesus prevented him, saying, What thinkest thou, Simon? of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute? of their own children, or of strangers?

26 Peter saith unto him, Of strangers. Jesus saith unto him, Then are the children free.

27 Notwithstanding, lest we should offend them, go thou to the sea, and cast an hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up; and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money: that take, and give unto them for me and thee.

The children are made free because they lay claim on a deeper law, the law of the Society of God Himself. Don't worry about paying your taxes. Do it with a glad heart. If it so be that the government is corrupt then God will deal with them, and will also take care of you. To the man who freaks out and goes off the deep end, he only answers a negative number with a negative number, and there is no power in that, no difference.

And I mean this in the most literal way. If the tax man bleeds you dry, God will fill you up. I have found this to be the case in my own life.

Or as our mothers taught us, "Two wrongs don't make a right."

It is tempting for a mortal to take up the swift sword of Justice and give a man what he's got coming to him. But oh so rarely does a mortal have the full facts of the matter. The sword is just way too sharp to start waving it around. You don't know who might get cut. I call this "stray bullets".

On the other hand, the importance might be in the struggle, the reaction, rather than actually righting a wrong. Does it strengthen the soul?

If this life is all there is, then any injustice must be met with extreme response. The clock is ticking to set it right. But I say that this life is the smaller portion, a mere knot in the string of eternity. Each human in this world was sired in the galactic core by the Supreme Creator, and held as an infant child in the loving arms of celestial parents on a world with twenty suns. This is the pre-existence.

And after this life, after a short eighty year life-span, there is an interim journey through a deeper world. It is a world where the justices and injustices of earth life are sorted out. That's a whole lot of therapy! I've spoken on this topic in a previous post.

And that's why I pay my taxes. With a smile on my face.