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Editorial: Re-Engineering Lives upon the Love of God
By PIA 2006 - New Year presents the best opportunity to rebuild lives on foundations more solid than those already tried. The years past have seen lives in the multitude shattered by calamities and disasters both man-made and natural.

Indeed, the magnitude and series of misfortunes on the personal, community, national, and global levels has been so mind-boggling that people are forced to cry out to the heavens: Is there no end to the endless cycle of destruction, wars, pestilence, and every other woe that has visited the planet? How can we rebuild our lives and escape the fate that man has been heir to?

Can men ever resolve the supreme ironies of modern civilization? How explain the hunger and poverty of millions alongside the profligacy of the few? How to account for the prevalence and re-emergence of ancient plagues despite the landmark advances in medical and life sciences? How justify the persistence of primitive and restrictive social structures in the face of astonishing technological progress that has shrunk the world into a global village and enabled humankind to reach the moon and Mars?

This conundrum of human existence has befuddled thinking men since known history. Yet, there must be a solution somewhere. But where is it? Mayhaps, the search has been in the wrong places. It may be time to revisit basic ideas from new perspectives. And a good place to start is to review fundamental spiritual precepts relevant to the existence of man on this planet.

Men were originally created in the image and likeness of God, says the Christian Scripture. And the earth and all thereon was also created perfect in the beginning -- "And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good."

Jesus confirmed and affirmed perfection as the origin and destiny of man, for he said in his very first public sermon: "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." This idea he repeated in another instance, "Ye are Gods, and the Scripture cannot be broken."

But being endowed with free will, men have the option of maintaining that perfection or departing from it. Men can choose to obey the rules the Great Architect has established for the maintenance of perfection throughout the created system and thereby experience perfection in their lives, or men can disobey God's rules and thus experiment with lives less than perfection -- lives of limitation, poverty, disease, sin, and death.

The parable of the prodigal son illustrates the stark irony of the life of limitation befalling Sons and Daughters of God who are otherwise heirs to limitless opulence and perfection. So long as prodigal sons and daughters persist in their disobedience, so long will they wallow in sin, disease and death.

Yet, God is most merciful. The very instant men return to the path of God obedience, that very moment they begin to regain their divine prerogatives. And provided men and women persevere in the strait and narrow path of living under the canopy of God's Laws, their striving will eventually be rewarded with permanent Victory over time and space.

But how to persevere in Godly living is always the challenge. Fortunately, Jesus gave tremendous help when he simplified all of God's commandments: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

There is the clear direction for re-engineering our lives towards God-ordained perfection. This is in recognition and acceptance of the edict that we are Temples of the Most High Living God -- whereby our thoughts, feelings, words and actions are so consecrated to God's purposes that we become veritable agents of His limitless blessings to the whole world, beginning with our own lives and affairs.

These things of the Spirit are understood only by the Spirit. And this Spirit can be invoked by those who are so minded, being part of their inner nature -- "Let that Mind which was in Christ Jesus be also in you," said Paul the Apostle.

But these things are nonsense to the spiritually uninspired, and mercifully so. For no one who strives to the highest perfection can endure save those who love God enough to the exclusion of anything else, including most especially the human ego. "Our God is a jealous God," reminds the Bible, and we cannot serve both God and mammon; no one can misuse God's energy to pursue the human agenda for long without reaping the karmic whirlwind ("Be not deceived, our God is not mocked!").

But to those who elect to rebuild their lives anchored on the Love of God, awaits the eternal promise: "Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven, and all these things will be added unto you."

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