The Mind of God

THE MIND OF GOD

Can one be simple,
When he is most un-simple,
And in one sample?

The topic is Theology – the study of the mind of God. When we talk of the mind of God, we do so with perspectives in mind: God of man and God of Himself. These two extremities are the opposite poles of the bi-polarity of God’s mind. When God reacts as God for Himself, he does also as God of man, man as God-created pet, being the issue. A theory to time indefinite, it is like Dalton’s Law of Partial Pressure: If gasses react, they do so in pressure … temperature remaining constant (Lambert, A New Certificate Chemistry, 1975). These polarity -  this scientific actualities -  co-occur  in Heaven, in midst of Seraphim and Cherubim;  co-live on earth, in midst of us, unseen like the presence of heat in a molten gold!
         Stop and think! This is the mind of God in its manifestations and embracement. God is a simple man, and so, his mind is simple. He gives enough chances to man to live, irrespective of how he does so. He makes the earth for him an excellent forum to disseminate his spiritual ideas. In all cases, man errs, using His bright and beautiful world as arsenals. But he looks on. Making a home for the homeless and allowing them to live in it in whichever way they choose, speaks loud of the extremity of his simplicity – his love. God pities and loves not only those who love him, but all. Yes! But He stands aside and looks on as though he rejoices; aside in his certainty that the victims for his sake will reap harvest of everlasting life and joy while as for the killers, he looks on in the bid to make them suffer, in the greater bid to make them change. What an extra-divine approach to issues! Kill evil-doers as they do evils, he will not!
The human body is made up of up to 70% water – this is provided by God. He needs air to live; lack of it will kill him in few minutes. Man needs food to live – lack of this will kill him. Man needs shelter made of plants, ranging from “epidothamus laxifolius, the shortest tree”, to the “giant Sequioa, the  largest tree”. If we say, following David (Psalm 8), that God made them all – the land, the sea, the sun, the moon, the plants etc, then it is a fact not tearable that as a matter of simplicity, God is all in all. Who has ever paid for any of these “goods”? No one.  Now shall we continue to deny that God’s mind is simple? “By no means!”
To be very simple is one thing, to be simple, is another. Looking at another side of the coin (No, another side of the die), we will say God is simple. He gives instructions, and as we fail, repeats same each time we do. Deduce the simplicity of God and his mind from the Theo-Israelite relations from 1513 BC to 0 – from Exodus to the Eve of the birth of Christ. God wants us to serve him with faith and obedience; he will be our father in Love and Kindness. He would also protect us and give us wisdom (the prime thing), peace and joy while we give naught for what. Paying naught for love that never fails is, indeed, simplicity only comparable to the extraordinary simplicity of the sun in providing 99% of the food content of the leaf, the leaf, giving naught.
God is selfless, too - read on. A common fact (We know well in Theology.) is that God created man in his own image, a reality that displaces the true selflessness of God. To what extent? Can the world richest man (What is his name, now?) trying to build a home for the houseless of the ghetto build him a house that is worth his own in the city? God created man like himself, giving him the breath-type that he uses. He gave to man the same shape, mind and breathe that he had – that Jesus had. The three entities were one, God’s mind cutting through Christ’s, man’s and God’s. God made man a conditional coequal;  originally, man , Christ and God were one –for if a transversal cuts two parallel lines, the opposite angels are equal, the alternate angles are all equal, and the vertically opposite angles are equal (Hardwood Clarke, 1970). However, man is less than God and Christ for man’s first disobedience, the fruit of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste brought death into this world and all our woes……(Milton:Paradise Lost ).
Yet, another side of the die; and here we shall say something about the compound nature of God’s mind. The mind of God is a compound and this introduces us to the duality of God’s mind, the duality of nature, the duality of all things. Man is twinned by woman; right is twinned  by left; day by night; black by white; positive by negative; God’s mind, by simplicity and compound nature; by para-simplicity and para-complexity etc. Does this mean God is all things, and all things, God? (This is outside the coverage of this piece.) God told Adam to live for ever, but later sent him off to die. He boasted of his intention to lead Israel, safe to Canaan. But he killed more than half on the way (Num 14).David was a fornicator and murderer; but God looked at him as “a man after my own heart”. God allowed the best man ever, to come from David – the murderer – the fornicator – the evil plotter! Moses was a murderer, but God chose him as the one worthy to lead his people from slavery. Jesus was God’s only son; but he allowed him to die for the sake of his bad sons. God sent Stephen on an errand; but stood beside and watched as he died in the process. Paul was hanged and Peter was sawn asunder in their active services to God. Peter erred twice – once at the arrest of Jesus; and again in the issue of table sharing with Gentiles. Yet, to God, Peter is the next in Christianity after Jesus. Instances reach up to the sun!
Those of the motion that the mind of God is compound i.e., not simple, say it in reference to his jealous nature. “Behold, I am your God, a jealous God …..” he is reported to have said. The real effects of jealousy can be well studied in women. But one analyst of OTHELLO once noted that “if a man is jealous, he is worse than a woman”, because he is stronger than her. Following this epigram, one can safely guess that “if God is jealous, he must be worse than any man” because, too, he is stronger than him. Proof: No one has ever killed a hundred people at once in jealousy; but God, in jealousy, had over 3000 people killed (Exodus 33).
That is not all about the mind of God – its complexity? Being in/in a compound is no complexity. (Compound and complex sentences are not the same, you know). With heart full of love and hate at the same time, God can send a man on errand where he knows his death is sure – like King David and Uriah!  Oh, oh. Ah, ah, like King David and Uriah! The cases of Stephen, Peter and Paul, aforementioned, and the roles of Jesus and Jonathan are cases in lieu. Jesus came to help God’s lost sons; and died in the process; Jonathan forsook his father for the sake of a man of God and died in the process. God does not want evil; but allows you wade into same. For instance, David plotted evil; and He gave him chance, strength and resources to execute it. David, rather than being killed as a result, lived; while thousands of innocent souls did die. In his love and kindness in one hand, and with hate and hardness in the other, God can make use of his enemy against his friends. (Like Shakespeare’s Twelth Night: Malvolio’s Creed, The better for my enemies; the worse for my friends) and the “Joseph I love, Esau I hate” determinism. The traditional enemies of God, the Philistines, were used by God to kill Jonathan, His own boy. The notorious Babylonians were empowered by God to undo Israel, his own chosen people. He can harden your heart so as to kill you; like giving a dog a bad name in order to kill him. “The Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart” is a decision incompatible to his desire that Pharaoh let the people go. He should have softened instead of hardening – since his object “Let my people go” – in the Yaweo-Israelite-Egyptians Relations.
Thus, this simplicity, this bare; this parasymplicity, this rare; this duality or compound nature, this sure; and complexity, this reflex, means that

Full Simplicity
In full time complexity
Is God’s reality.          

{Emmanuel Eyebira Agharowu (Honsbira)}