He Came as a Thief in the Night

To obey the law to love God and the neighbor, make a habit of multiplying excuse-the-neighbor ideation like 'Are they undergoing stress or sick? or were they abused?' Once you construct a plausible excuse for nasty behaviors, this blunts evil feelings as though one were kicking a puppy. Think how difficult it is to disprove plausible excuses for unfortunate behavior! Such plausible excuses may seem flimsy and ethereal, but they have a concrete dampening effect on evil feelings and excuses-for-these thoughts in adulterous interrelation. For the sin and error nature of the proprium, our fallen egos, yearns to caricature the neighbor so as more easily to hate them! If we do not make excuses for the neighbor, then we accuse them; and we accuse them the more readily as we caricature them and thereby commit false witness within us. "Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else ex...

People will certainly ask you about problematic passages in the Word of God in the literal sense. It matters so much to have answers ready for those difficult questions that are actually loving and healthy.  1 Peter 3:15 King James Version 15 But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear: One wishes in this spirit to "give an answer" to the problematic parts of Numbers 31 involving the slaughter of all the men, all the male children, and all the women who are not virgins. Whatever this slaughter was for the children of Israel, for all of humanity in all times and places this slaughter represents purification from sin and error. Men, women, sons, daughters, all of these express goods and truths or evils and falsehoods in various relations to each other. The clue that this chapter is about purification can be seen quite clearly in verses 23 and 24, where it ...