Just and Unjust.

We have these HUGE white-winged doves here on the mesa. About a dozen of them hang around daily and gorge themselves. At least the other birds come and go... you know, sort of look busy. But the doves just eat and eat and eat. Except when it rains. But they don't go far.

They look so pitiful, hanging on their wet perches like lumps of wet seaweed. So sad and dependent and unproductive. I had to remind myself they would soon be leaving... to join their dove brethren in great flocks to fly across South Texas grain fields so they can get SHOT TO HELL. It won't be long until Texas dove season. 

Only a handful will return next spring. Anyway those sad, drenched, condemned birds seemed to take the form of a sermon illustration...

It says in the Bible that it rains on the just and the unjust. Now rain can be a good thing or it can be a bad thing... depending on your situation. Farmers in the Holy Land during biblical times probably thought rain was a very good thing. But it says that the "unjust," in our modern lingo meaning bad people, get rain right along with the good people. In other words, life is not fair.

Sweet fat doves get "harvested"... some of them, and some make it to Mexico. Bad things might happen to good people, and good things might happen to bad people. Those who look for, or expect justice in this life are more than likely going to be disappointed. 

We who follow Christ trust that our Creator has His reasons... and He will distribute ultimate "Justice" in good time. Those who cannot trust in a Holy and Just God are doomed to the worst scenario possible, since life is not fair; no justice now, but justice for their God-rejecting soul for Eternity. 

And that would mean separation forever from the Creator of this magnificent Earth, the giver of all good things... our very lives... Nature... love... the rain... To me that makes even Texas heat sound good. But this brings us to Hell, whatever that means, all because of a human miscalculation. Jesus referred to it as "Gehenna," known then as a local garbage dump... but in his metaphor, for souls.  On the surface, to our limited and mortal intellects, this seems so unjust... but if Jesus was speaking of a real spiritual destination, it is the determined, half-baked choice of millions.

 The Apostle Paul wrote that Nature itself was sufficient evidence of a benevolent God. And I concur.

Still, some are staking their whole Eternity on Paul, not to mention Jesus, and all his billions of followers, being wrong. After TWO THOUSAND years of sun and rain on this earth, with so many millions of followers from all over the globe worshiping this God who made extraordinary measures to facilitate our fellowship with Him... FOREVER, still they turn their nose up because He has, in their estimation failed to either prove Himself, or earn their Faith and obedience. Yet no philosophers or great teachers have ever proven that the God of the Bible or Jesus were just a myth. Quite the opposite.

"Unbelievers" see an unjust earth, condemn any god who would allow that, second-guess Him who set the stars into motion, and choose Hell... out of insolence. They are those hapless, for the most part harmless, innocent birds, animals gorging themselves, following their instincts... to certain destruction. 

These "birds" pretty much live a hedonist lifestyle... exploring anything that could be judged as NOT-God; grasping for the fullness of human existence, pleasing their own idea of life... and fashioning their own concept of a personal legacy. And their own idea of justice. They spend their lives trusting in themselves, asking for no mercy and giving little, making sure they get all they can out of the only life they know... the one they live. They don't want a God any greater than their own conscience, and refuse that one even exists, or that anyone knows what is true. They are quite content with the now, no God above, no afterlife.

Jesus promised, "Seek and you will find"

And in the end, these sad, willful atheists will get all of that which they have sought. And that will be justice.