Some further clarification on some of the provocative statements I made in the last post are in order. First off, I want to experience ultimate personal fulfillment. I believe the best way of doing that is attaining, and thus living for, total health and consciousness forever. I realize I am mortal and will die. Therefore, I need a hope outside of myself to pursue eternity. The hope I have now is found in Yehoshua (Jesus) the Christ, His resurrection, and His promise of eternal life to those who believe in Him.

The question now though is, should I only seek to do what is expressly His will in my life? Now this would be a simpler question if His will for me personally was spelled out in black and white for every activity in my life. However, this is not the case. Many Christians agree that the Bible is the only written revelation from the Almighty. According to World Christian Encyclopedia, there are over 30,000 denominations of Christianity. This number is staggering! If this is any indication, it shows that the Bible can be interpreted in many different ways on many different topics and beliefs.

Here are some common answers people give to correct this problem:

1. The Holy Spirit leads us to do His will. Unless you are prepared to say that all the other denominations of Christianity except your own are not “really” Christian or are not seeking to follow the Spirit, this solution has some problems.
2. We should at least have the desire to follow His will in everything. This one I can sympathize with more, because this is the position I held for several years. However, this introduces all sorts of possible misplaced convictions. For example, take the command of Paul in I Corinthians to “glorify Elohim (God) in your body.” Because I had the desire to follow His will in everything, I used this verse as my motivation to do major internal cleanses and detoxing, radically change my diet, and disassociate myself from polluting environments. I also did a 40-day fast on top of that. Now, none of these things are bad, but are they necessary? I think you could Biblically argue that they are, if you really want to follow all of Scripture (I am being a little sarcastic here, though not much). And this is just one command of the hundreds (perhaps thousands) in Scripture.

Now the question could be asked, would I have the desire to follow the Father’s will in everything if it was clear and I believed doing so would procure for me the greatest level of health and consciousness in eternity. And the answer would be yes! However, although I do currently believe following His will would result in the greatest level of health and consciousness in eternity, His will is not clear to me at all.

So, my current paradigm is to keep a 50-50 split of personal and Scriptural (or spiritual) motivations. Thus, roughly half of the things I do in life are motivated by a desire to follow the Father’s will, and the other half are motivated by personal desires. Keep in mind that there is overlap between these two sectors and the more there is the better I like it. However, the root motivations remain different.

So, for example, one of the things I am focusing on in my life right now is redeeming the time. The base motivation for this is Scriptural. I also like doing this for personal reasons. However, the principal motivating factor remains rooted in Scripture.

On the other hand, I am putting a decent amount of effort into writing this blog and this is motivated by personal desires. Could it be used to honor my savior? Sure, but that would still not be the principal reason I am doing it at this time.

This post is becoming lengthy, so I will end here. These thoughts will definitely be continued in future posts.