“The most important quality for a person to have, the foundation of life, is wisdom. Heaven will not allow a man to be irreverent. Those who make boastful, assertive, speeches will find that heaven will rain down blows upon them, until, at last, men who live long enough come to find wisdom.” -Senator from Antigone

I will not make a garden of relationships to tend to. I will write them. I will write them, then go back and read and rephrase, I’ll change the course of it or jump forward and enact the idea I have. I will guide and craft the with all the wonders of life: the wonder of love and the wonder of conflict. I will write my relationships and fill them with bad and also good so that they fulfill the human desire to correct all the wrong and also to enjoy a splendid respite together. -Rebecca Willoughby

“Liberty without obedience is confusion, and obedience without liberty is slavery.” -William Penn

Desire makes a person cling to something or someone that they need to let go of. We think that if we keep trying, if only we change our own behavior or explain ourselves better, we can stop this madness, this broken-hearted war. We hope, wish, believe that they will see what they do to us, and stop. -Rebecca Willoughby

“Instead of waiting for God to unveil the new Heaven and the new earth, the rest of us can give the world a taste of what God’s kingdom is all about- building up, repairing brokenness, showing mercy, reinstating hope, and generally adding value. In this expanded model, everyone plays an essential role.” -Gabe Lyons.

Everyone always says that Jesus was tempted just like every human is. He was hungry and wanted to eat food offered by Satan, and he probably had to fight some lustful thoughts as he was growing up because he was a human just like us. BUT HE NEVER DID SIN. Jesus never felt guilt for horrible things that he had done because he never did horrible things. Yes, he took our sins on himself on the cross and felt that terrible weight, then paid for them for three days in hell, but that was spiritual grief that he chose to endure out of love for us.

(I think Jesus would have gone to hell, not this strange, limbo, cryo-space deep sleep thing. Jesus took all the sin, and sin must be punished if anyone is going to be in God’s presence. God is perfect and holy and just; sin must be destroyed. All sin was paid for when Jesus died- sin hasn’t been destroyed yet, but it will be when this realm is destroyed; Jesus dying for us and being punished for us just gave us humans a way to separate ourselves from sin before sin is destroyed. Like having a grenade in your hand. You don’t know when it will explode, Jesus doesn’t even know (Mark 13:32). Some people may not even see the grenade in their hand, or if they do see it, they may not know what it is. Anyway, it is a grenade. It will explode. When you realize that it is a grenade and will explode, you obviously will throw it as far as you can, and then run! That way you won’t die. So, wouldn’t it be… unfair… if humans, no matter how hard they try, can’t help but sin because we are born sinful- not good, neutral, or tainted- and we must go to hell because some of us never severed ourselves from sin because of human nature? We cannot separate ourselves alone, that’s why we need Jesus. So, if we don’t throw the grenade we will go to hell forever, but what if Jesus took the grenade out of our hands and curled around it, letting it explode inside him, wouldn’t it make sense if he died from the explosion and went to hell? If Jesus didn’t go to hell, wouldn’t that make his redemption a little… tooty frooty frilly willy nilly? If Jesus never went to hell to pay for sin as it is supposed to be paid for, doesn’t that annul Salvation? I think Jesus was in hell for three days. There is even debate if those days were actually three days, but I haven’t studied that.).

So, Jesus never felt guilty for bad things he did. Is that why it’s so hard for us to understand how He, the trinity of God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit, could forgive us? As if He doesn’t understand how guilty we feel like He doesn’t know what he’s forgiving? “What’s the point of forgiving? I still feel horrible.” But maybe God does have an idea of guilt. (Of course he has an idea of guilt, he knows what sin is because sin is the opposite of his being. But God is Jesus and Jesus is God, so maybe Jesus, who is our Savior, Lord, and friend, somehow bridges between everyone, and Jesus really does understand guilt because of his own actions, because…) Because God felt bad for ever creating humans. In Genesis 6:6 God felt grief and guilt for ever making humans, animals, birds, actually the entire world! He felt bad about something he had done.

(God didn’t really feel guilt like we think of guilt because God cannot do anything wrong because he knows exactly what will happen because he is omniscient, and God is also perfect so he cannot mess up. He knew that sin would enter the world and that he would be grieved that he ever created the world.).

If he was grieved, then why did he ever create it and start all of this? God created the world to glorify him because God is worthy of our praise because he is all powerful. He created humans in his image (gave us and only us a spiritual being), and he gave us the world to rule over, and to go populate the earth so that the entire earth can glorify him. He allowed sin to come into his creation because he gave us free will, which means we can choose between him and sin. He had to give us the option, or else we wouldn’t appreciate his glory and we would be trapped in perfection. Sounds weird, but it’s still true. But even from the very beginning of sin, God had a plan to save every single soul he created! And he kept our free will intact. We still have the choice between him and sin.

He knew we would be grieved that he created the world and then destroy it in a flood, except everyone and all the animals on Noah's ark. But that still does not answer why it says God was grieved when God cannot feel grief (because he cannot mess up because he is perfect and omniscient).

A human wrote Genesis. God told this human, probably Moses, to write. God told Moses what to write, and he wrote it, exactly, word for word, every pause for breath and every descriptive word. God told Moses to write “and God was grieved” because that would allow us humans, as emotional spiritual creatures, to relate more to God and to understand the story. God gave himself emotions in the Bible for our sakes. God made a way for humans to know him a little better.