September 23rd.

These are the men David put in charge of the music in the house of the LORD after the ark came to rest there. They ministered with music before the tabernacle, the Tent of Meeting, until Solomon built the temple of the LORD in Jerusalem. They performed their duties according to the regulations laid down for them.

David put men in charge of the music in the house of the LORD because he was doing a thing for God's sake. Even though He was unseen, David believed He was there, and David wanted to provide something for God, what he was able to provide. In the same devoted sentiment as wanting to build God a house to live in, David wanted to provide God with that place of peace and order away from the chaos of the humans and their lives, where His people could come to Him and give Him something. Throughout the accounts of the establishment of the sacrificial ritual, God makes a point of saying that the burning of the flesh of animals was a soothing savor to Him, something that made Him happy, what gave Him something He likes.

One underlying thought is that because God is unseen and so much removed from our experience as natural animals, He doesn't need anything from anyone. It's as though He is so great and above what the humans can comprehend that He is fully self-contained, perfect like a machine or robot that doesn't ever need anything, therefore there's nothing to give that is adequate. That's both true, because as humans made unclean by the animal nature we can't ever come close to Him, so that in fact there can be no enjoyment of that which is separated from Him. That which is away from Him cannot be related to Him.

Your mother was like a vine in your vineyard planted by the water;
it was fruitful and full of branches because of abundant water.

Its branches were strong, fit for a ruler's scepter. It towered high above the thick foliage,
conspicuous for its height and for its many branches.

But it was uprooted in fury and thrown to the ground. The east wind made it shrivel,
it was stripped of its fruit; its strong branches withered and fire consumed them.

Now it is planted in the desert, in a dry and thirsty land.

Fire spread from one of its main branches and consumed its fruit.
No strong branch is left on it fit for a ruler's scepter.'

This is a lament and is to be used as a lament.

Israel was the fruitful vine under David, the work of God's hand to make her what she once was. He could have kept her there, by continuing to do what He did by bringing her to that place above the nations around her because of God's hand to make her strong and powerful. But why would God continue to bless her when her heart was far from Him, when she had continually chosen other men to be faithful to than her true husband, those who weren't even real, but were made up by the humans who lived in the nations around her?

It's a sad story, because here was this beautiful princess, brought up and made beautiful by God, and He had given her all that made her what the others envied. But God was forced to make her the ugliest girl because her collective heart strayed far from her husband while she prostituted herself with anyone she could find. From God's perspective it's sort of like, "Why couldn't you just appreciate what I gave you, why did you act like I didn't even exist, why did you make me destroy such a beautiful thing I had made with my own hands? Why couldn't you just be good and be mine?"

The bulk of the OT words tell a great lesson, and the lesson is clear—she was given over to what she loved in her heart, which caused her to go away from Him who was true, and toward that which was merely created to be an alternative to choosing Him, so there would be a genuine choice in the matter, so the choice wouldn't be a set up, phony if the alternative wasn't alluring. So there's the nutshell that we need to get, that from the first humans and their choice—either the One who was good, or the created alternative, the snake and his alluring choice—there is always going to be that alluring choice for those who are given the choice and know it (not just another thing to go out and buy and own, so they can get something from the made up gods—the ultimate survival for the animal who thinks it's going to end up forever in the made up heaven with all the "good people"—those like it).

The draw of that which leads us away from the path that leads to the Father is strong and powerful, because it comes from inside of us. It is us—all that we learned to rely upon which could give us the pitiful satisfaction we learned to love (even though it was pathetic)—so it's not some conceptual idea about the sin we don't believe we have (because we think we're inherently good not evil at our core). It isn't what we can easily deny with the wave of the hand and a few lines from the book of mythology about the gods who want to save anyone and everyone and cram them all into the made up heaven where they'll all survive forever. It is what we love, and love with all our heart, which is why for the true sons it becomes a genuine deal when they choose the Father because it means they choose against what they love with every bit of what they are—their very selves and every bit of the life they counted on to give them what they thought they wanted.

The sons aren't magically transported to a place where all of a sudden it's not an issue for them to choose, like they wake up one day and they're some holy creature that has a force field around it so it's only desire is to love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul mind and strength; and their brother as they much as they love their own selves. That will be exactly what they *don't* want to do, because the power of the animal will be activated in them all of a sudden—when it senses that it is in danger it will, like any threatened wild animal, raise up and fight for its life. The teacher uses its fierce fighting power to show us just how powerless we are to choose the Father, because we always want to choose our self, our things, our way of surviving, and gratifying our own needs—and who knows better than us how to do all that for our selves.

Between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.

While it's true that there is nothing natural that God can be pleased with, there is something He cannot make. The things that the humans love and run after, because they are so valuable to them, are detestable to God because they do Him no good. What the naturally God-hating humans find detestable and worthless (a heart that longs to find out the truth about God and what He loves so that they might actually become able to be pleasing to Him) is what God cannot make. It is the thing to Him that is like great wealth is to the humans—highly valuable and greatly pleasing to Him. It is in line with what David did for God in providing the place and the resources to minister to Him, musicians and songs of devotion and love for God, to provide something for Him.

What is highly valued among men is detestable in God's sight (and vice-versa; what is detestable among men is highly valued in God's sight).

The heart of devotion to the Father and His purpose for the earth—that out of it He might draw His family of sons who have all chosen Him over what they loved most—is the message of the Son of God and what he was driven to do, and not do, that message he gave to his disciples about the only thing worth choosing, the Father and the community of those who have chosen the Father's way. Their small community represented the even more true Israel, whereas Ezekiel (another copy of the promised great prophet) lamented over the community which itself was a copy of the better thing.

I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command.

The Law and the Prophets were proclaimed until John. Since that time, the good news of the kingdom of God is being preached, and everyone is forcing his way into it. It is easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for the least stroke of a pen to drop out of the Law.

The old covenant was about how God brilliantly joined this people as One Mind/identity and consciousness through memory, recitation and repetition. God spoke to Moses and Moses spoke the words of God  to the people and they learned to memorize it and repeat it and recite it as One Voice and on Mind. This was true of the Law of Moses, prayers and songs. This oral tradition continued throughout the history of the Jews. It can be seen in David when he tells us that he meditated on the Law of God day and night. He knew the words as if they were his own and in the pray of Jonah he demonstrates to us his deep knowledge by memory of the Psalms. In the prayer of Mary we see too the same pattern of memorizing and the ability to recite verbatim.

The words that could be spoken to one another about what God required from His people were words that could be used by brothers to point each other to (and back to, when necessary) the God who had created their community and had given them peace, safety and prosperity in the land He promised to their ancestor and his offspring (themselves). It was the word by which they could say to each other, "Know the Lord," therefore teaching their brother what was important, being shepherds for each other for the sake of God, to assist each other in searching for the God who purposely makes Himself hidden, to find out who will search for Him. The old covenant was flawed in a way, because it relied on the natural things that happen on the outside, what the humans can observe and how they relate to each other with their natural faculties e.g., the words they speak to each other.

The new covenant was established between God who is spirit to deal with them who are natural. It was superior because it provided a new way for Him to interact with His new people, who would be those who were able to hear what the rest couldn't, because they were opened up by a special thing that happened in them. Whereas the old is about anyone who humanly speaking became one of God's people by something done to their human bodies, the new was about things the humans couldn't see with the eyes that were in their human bodies, because its composition was more like Him and less like them. The new covenant is all about the better things, but they are not perceived by the humans with their natural faculties. They are better because they exist as something that's undetected by natural beings because they are as God is—God is the (only) spirit.

The old was about the tabernacle, Jerusalem, the house of God, the temple; all which serve as a pointing to the better things, of which these more inferior things were only copies. The new was about a thing that could pierce through all the natural limitations and go into a man to live in his heart and teach him from that place, which was below his thinking and figuring, his ability to read things written on stone and memorize the rest, his ability to adequately convey to his brother what God required and convince him to be true to that instead of everything else that pulled him away from God.

For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another. But God found fault with the people and said:

"The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.

It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not remain faithful to my covenant,
and I turned away from them, declares the Lord.

This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time, declares the Lord.
I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.

No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, `Know the Lord,'
because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.
For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more."

By calling this covenant "new," he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear.

The reason that which was given by God was allowed to be considered obsolete was because of the nature of the way by which God spoke to the humans to convey what He wanted from them. In giving the humans this created choice of that which was alluring, and the nature of its power to influence them, its ability to create a snowball effect amongst them was too powerful, and they became constantly swept away by that power, which was just the choice against Him, created by Him, an adversary of those who wanted to choose Him in order to make that choice real and valid, otherwise, if they knew all the facts as He knew them, they would just be compelled to choose Him, which wouldn't be much of a choice.

This reveals a crucially important component about the personality of the Father, crucial because it is an underlying reason for everything that exists, and answers the question the humans always ask, "Why are we here." That which usually remains hidden beneath doctrinal dung heaps is the simple idea that He delights when one of the humans, when given the choice, refuses that which is so tempting and alluring and seems to his internal being about a hundred times more appealing than the alternative; to go against that which is in him by instinct of nature to choose. The Father lives to reward one for this type of betrayal against himself, which in so doing reverses that which caused the original curse—his kind becoming separated from the Father. He has wanted, even from the beginning, to be a Father to a family of those whom all have chosen Him over the created, alluring choice (the devil, satan, the deceiver, the adversary, the serpent, etc). It is why the serpent even exists as a crucial part of the story, so the humans would have a genuine choice to make.

The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

They felt no shame because they weren't yet turned into animals, like the animal they chose instead of God. While the human was still able to choose to be and remain a vulnerable son to the Father, like a newborn infant feeling no shame before Him, the Father told him, as per the choice He was giving him:

"You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."

But the animal said,

"You will not surely die,"

The helper trusted the lie that animal proposed to her instead of the truth that God told her; then the human trusted the helper instead of listening to what God told him. They both trusted and wanted what the animal told them was better. Once they did, they were completely given over to becoming what they truly wanted, by the choice they made.

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."

When they trusted the animal and did the thing the Father said not to do, they became animals because God gave them over to what they wanted in their hearts. They were now fearful and afraid of God like wild animals, and felt ashamed because of their naked condition. Once they get kicked out of the place where God lived, He puts the animal skins on them to signify what they now are, as per Genesis 3. Now not vulnerable sons any more, but animals who were afraid of Him, and separated from Him. Now their father was the one they trusted, who God gave them over to because of their choice.

If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now am here. I have not come on my own; but he sent me. Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me! Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don't you believe me? He who belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.

An exercise of contemplation would be to think about what the humans love and run after, what they find valuable. We can find certain things out that way, things that are true because they make sense to how we know we are prone toward being (what actually lives inside us to instinctually drive us toward certain tendencies, love and want certain things, be more attracted to certain types of people, etc.); versus some far off concepts that don't make any sense to how we can observe the world and ourselves existing as (what we know we're like if we could ever admit it). For instance, if we say that we're sinners, there is no tangible relevance to what we know about ourselves, what is in our heart, what we're naturally prone to, and especially we can't know what not being a sinner would look like. If we were able to be honest, we could get an idea of what God hates and loves by what's naturally living in us, driving us to be what we are, and we could understand why He loved and loves Jesus the firstborn Son.

The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him.

I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does.

The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.

However, we cannot be honest because of the terms of the curse, what we can see was the very first action of the humans once they were all of a sudden under it. What did they do? They went and hid behind a tree because they were afraid. That is the core description of the human, just like a wild animal that always runs and hides from anything and everything that comes its way, because everything is a threat to it. Instead of conspiring together for the good toward getting and having the truly valuable thing—to help each other as brothers to search for the One who wants to be a Father to them (what the Father wants from His family of sons)—they conspire together for evil to identify and declare amongst themselves what they consider valuable, which are things that can help a wild animal survive better in many different ways; physically, mentally and emotionally.

What do the humans love, and what is naturally in in them to create a consensus between all of the humans as to what's valuable to them. We can identify what's valuable as what they naturally love and run after. Money is a big one, the currency of buying and selling. It makes us feel safe when we have it, and unsafe when we don't, so we're always involved in trying to get some more because of the way it makes us feel. Something deeper than that, then, would be that humans love to feel safe and secure, because there exists that underlying knowledge of death that everyone is afraid to face. The animal nature is geared toward surviving, fueled by that need to feel secure and safe. Therein lies the logic behind the value of money to the humans, because it is a tangible satisfier of those things that are deep and hard to face.

Now think about Jesus and the way he was while he lived in the tent of his human flesh. In regards to money, he went to lengths to explain that it wasn't something that should be loved, served, or after which one should run about all his life as the humans do, always trying to get more. Why, because money is evil? It takes the place of the Father who wants to give the son what He wants to give him. When the son is pursuing money, his heart cannot be truly devoted to the pursuit of the gifts his Father wants to give him, which are not natural things, but spiritual. What these better gifts provide the son is the spiritual competitor of what money provides for him—safety and security, what he wants most of all, to know that he is being cared for by a good Father, not just theoretically but actually.

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, `What shall we eat?' or `What shall we drink?' or `What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Jesus addressed the natural in this quest to feel safe and secure, but reduced what's necessary to food and clothing, which was in his mind set the only things truly necessary for the continuation of the body's existence. Everything else, what the humans love, consider valuable, and fill their days with trying to acquire, is unnecessary, because all that time devoted to getting things and money creates and defines the heart of a man. He is what he loves and runs after, not just what he says with his mouth, because talk is cheap, and he can easily fool the other humans by his flattering words and outward deeds.

The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.

The time would be coming shortly when the sons of God in Jerusalem would be in poverty, while their brothers in other parts of the world would have plenty. The nature of the animal is to value money and to hold on to it tightly, because it gives him those tangible feelings of safety and security. Jesus is teaching the sons about what God loves, not one who clings on so tightly to it, but God loves a cheerful giver, which goes against what is naturally in him to do and want to do.

Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else's property, who will give you property of your own?

What is being trustworthy with money look like, according to Jesus? The two sets of verses that sandwich this one say it. The parable is about giving the money away that the manager was entrusted with. The parable is about a manager of someone else's money, because the manager has the right attitude about the money—it wasn't his, and therefore he doesn't mind giving it away, and he saw his chance so he took it, and used it to get something else for himself, something less tangible yet nonetheless valuable according to Jesus. Usually when we think of being a manager of money, we think about how to hold on to it shrewdly, what all the humans are naturally driven to do, not to shrewdly give it away. That's because it's in the animal's built in instincts to love money, not give it away, because it most easily makes us feel the way we want and love to feel, beneath everything else—safe and secure.

No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.

Knowing that the humans are always driven to want to find and know this feeling of safety and security, and the sons of God are taken from human stock, there is the dilemma for the sons of how those needs are actually satisfied. Jesus' heart was honest and pure, because he wasn't an animal—he was the only humans who didn't pass over to animal maturity and adulthood, thus becoming dead, unclean, impure, imperfect—so he was able to speak the perfect truth about the things the humans love and run after, which is still totally applicable.

The truth that Jesus spoke about money was just a very spiritually logical attitude to have, because he knew its value and its purpose for the humans. Since he was sent to teach the sons about their Father (to reveal Him to them), he did, which is why the Father loves him. He taught them that money has lots of value for the humans, but no value for God's sons. There fore it shouldn't be held in high regard as something valuable for them, because it would only stand up as something blocking their path on the path that leads to the Father.

Money does satisfy that very real need and craving to feel safe and secure within the humans, so it will be something that has very real and spiritually actual potential to do that. It turned Solomon's heart away from God because it has that real potential; it's not theoretical, because it satisfies that deeper need to feel safe and secure. I know this because it's in me to be this way, and I am naturally prone to loving money because it does just that for me—making me feel safe, giving me a true comfort in my heart that is tangible when I look at it or think about it.

You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts.

The heart is elusive; it's about the deepest thoughts of a man, what is accessible only to God, and sometimes him. Most don't even know what's in their own heart, but are just driven along by consensus and instinct. The state of a heart being cleaned of all the human garbage that keeps it impure before God, which keeps the individual from ever being able to be brought near to Him is what defines one of the humans as a son rather than merely an unclean animal in this state—where most of them exist and don't even know it.

It doesn't just happen, because then we wouldn't need to run after and continue to believe, even against the tide of humanity who find what we're running after detestable, because it is elusive and has no bearing on their perceived standards of value. It has to be a long, hard road of suffering and grief—in human terms—because that journey serves to do the purification necessary to "root out the evil (the ways of the humans, what keeps defining us as mere animals) from our midst." We can't mix evil with God, things of the humans with things of the son. The sons have to unlearn the ways that are naturally in us, so that we can have an honest heart which doesn't hide or default to thinking it can hide from God, the primary operational mode of the animals, the first thing the humans did after they became animals, when they bonded themselves with the snake who they trusted instead of God.

Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's.

Jesus knew that God knew what was inside the man's heart, and we have to know that that is what he must be judged by—not the external things, that which can be see by the other humans, which gets them rewards from them. What matters to God is the heart of a man, which is either pointed toward or away from Him. When it's pointed at the things that the humans love and run after, whatever they are, they can't be pointed toward God. You can't mix the evil (what the humans love) with God (what His sons love).

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.

What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?

The word that Jesus spoke about the poverty in Jerusalem, and how God's sons are compared to the mere animals, was the same word that was alive in the hearts of the Jerusalem believers. The living word spoke unintelligible words, to teach and urge them to become good sons for God's sake, and not allow themselves to be defined as mere animals to God's shame. That was the purpose of the accounts of the Israelites, the recordings that were preserved for them to have, which were used by the living word to teach them how not to be evil, as they were so often, consistently, automatically defaulting to that mode because of the curse of that animal nature that was always pulling on them. They didn't have to give in, but they always, consistently did give in to doing the opposite of what God desired them to be/do, to their shame and His anger.

So along with acting like mere animals, there was also the act of self-justification, which was addressed by James, who was in the center of the poverty. He witnessed some who said that they had faith, but also who clung on to their money and would not part with it, as per what is naturally in them because of the animal nature. Being a cheerful giver is having another, that which marks not an animal but a son. Animals are programmed to be afraid and therefore to want to hold on to their money while they rationalize how that could be pleasing to God.

It's sort of like God throughout the history of His people Israel, was consistently having to ask the question, "Why can't I just have a family of sons who will choose to love me, instead of doing what Adam did, just giving in so quickly, easily, and consistently to that thing which pulled at them? They always default to unfaithfulness instead of remaining faithful to me." There are many instances of this question that is put in the mouths of His holy prophets.

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'

The humans can only keep defaulting to the way that is naturally in them by instinct, as per the animal nature which defines them as unclean animals when they are led by it. The sons of God are given the choice to come away from that nature, so they are actually choosing to become sons instead of remaining unclean animals. That is the gospel, or "good news" that Paul preached, that the transformation wa possible. That is why so many things are considered by the writers of the preserved words, as evil, and bad. One, the words were/are intended not for all the humans, but for that special group of first century humans who were being inhabited by this other thing, the spirit of the living God. They talked in terms of being "filled with that life (the spirit)," which was the idea of letting it take over what was evil, what made them unclean before God—that which wanted to pull them back into serving and running after it, instead of running after what God wanted to give them.

But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people.

Why? because that's what the animals did, who were defined by the nature that ruled them instead of this new nature, that which they understood as the spirit, which was the spiritually tangible life of God--God is the spirit—which was living in their bodies for a short time in the first century. What do animals do, what are they driven to do and be? They make babies, so that drive to mate and have sex, which brings with it so many feelings all over the place which will ensure that, runs all through them. It is everywhere because it is constantly being reinforced by everything the humans are.

It's in commercials etc. because IT WORKS, it achieves the goals in a real way because of its ubiquity in the humans. And what is that goal? Greed, the love of accumulating more money, getting more money and stuff for itself, which is another thing that's built in to the animals via their instincts, what's naturally in them because of that need to feel safe and secure. The things that are called bad, evil and sinful in the preserved words are beheld by the writers that way, because they continually and effectively serve to pull them back against what God wanted for them, into the old way, when they were solitary defined, like the rest of the humans, not as sons of God but unclean animals, sons of the devil, God's adversary from the beginning, which was being swayed away from remaining true and faithful to God.

Greed, anger, envy, adultery, lust, idolatry, wickedness, evil, depravity, murder, strife, deceit, malice, gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant, boastful, senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. All these things are merely things that humans are naturally prone to being and doing. Like the message of Lord of the Flies, the humans at their core aren't naturally good; they are naturally bent on self-preservation and whatever leads to that, because that is the way of the animal, the survivalist.

Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person--such a man is an idolater--has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God's wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be partners with them.

Remember those earlier days after you had received the light, when you stood your ground in a great contest in the face of suffering. Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution; at other times you stood side by side with those who were so treated.

You sympathized with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions. So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.