My Dogs Worship My Wife

The rest of us could go burn for all they care. As long as "Mom" is around, 100% of Grizzly's and Thunder's devotion is on her. As I type, Thunder is sprawled in her lap as she tries to read, and while Grizzly is beside me, he's staring at her waiting for his turn in her lap.

Hold on that for a moment and move over here where we can discuss "consciousness." What is it? What does it mean to be conscious or sentient? This is a big deal, because on Earth, though there are other intelligent animals, we are the sole possessors of consciousness. In the archives somewhere, you'll recall I mentioned the "consciousness explosion" that perplex scientists so. It seems 65,000 years ago (in their C speed erroneous thinking) our ancestors went from basic animal awareness to consciousness in an anthropological eye-blink. They have no idea how (from an evolutionary standpoint, it's a bad leap; consciousness breaks the chains of "survival of the fittest").

"Consciousness" is "self awareness" with "self direction" and "self gratification" and "self destruction" thrown into the mix. Animals survive. That's their one goal. They can play, but really, everything is geared toward survival. Their instincts drive them that way.

Instead of instinct, we have consciousness, and survival is the simply the springboard on which we achieve our true objective, self gratification. Or as David rightly said in his sermon, self worship. With an animal, it's all about survival; with people, it's all about "me" which often gets in the way of survival. We will kill ourselves in the pursuit of our pleasure.

Now we're back to the dogs and their worship of Lynette. When given a loving object, they worship OUTWARD. This is what Adam and Eve did. They had indwelling sin genetically written in their DNA but it was not expressed until a command not to eat from the tree of "consciousness" activated it. Paul tells us we need the law to show us the sin inside us. One law is apparently enough.

When they ate from it, all other people existed outside the garden also achieved consciousness (Adam is both a name and a word meaning "mankind." Whether or not he was the first man or just the first man created in the garden, he was the Platonic Archetype; what happens to him at a genetic template level happened to everyone - yes, yes, this is all speculation and not explicitly in the Bible... I take it from Paul saying "through Adam, sin (consciousness) entered the world." It could mean, and must also mean, that genetic sin is passed down from the father, not the mother, hence Jesus' sinless nature on Earth.)

From the Fall on, we each worship INWARD. Something about knowing right from wrong makes us dependant on ourselves rather than God.

This was part of God's plan from the beginning (as was our redemption through Jesus). We are to dominate the Earth, which we could not do as animals. Dominate doesn't just mean control, but also to optimize. Conservation, city building with Green principles, art (the real stuff -- maybe grist for another post), music, and all the things that go into "building" (math (ugg), engineering, science) are part of responsible dominion of the Earth. Stewardship is a huge part of dominion. Our takeover of the Indians was dominion at its worst, our rebuilding of cities wiped out by tornado is the good stuff.

There has never been a conscious human being without genetic (indwelling) sin, EXCEPT Jesus.

Jesus was not like Adam, and Adam was not like Jesus. When we enter His kingdom, we will not be like Adam OR Jesus. Unlike Adam, we will be conscious but without sin. Unlike Jesus, we will have an imperishable body. (I'm not really sure what Jesus has now, to be honest. Is He as He was at the transfiguration, or does He have another state of being different than optimized human?)

I can't imagine what that's like. Imperishable, sin-free, still conscious. As long as I'm covered by Jesus, though, I'll find out. :)