Strong.

What is it that makes a person say, "I will make myself strong."

Once again it is fear.
Fear of being overpowered, fear of being bullied, fear of going under, fear of humiliation.....

During the 1980s it was noticeable that many men in the gay community practiced bodybuilding.
This was to make themselves strong.
They felt so threatened by AIDS and the community's reaction to AIDS that they felt they had to be invulnerable.

This at first seems a kind of answer to life.
But it leads to tests of strength and power struggles that are counter-productive to our development.

The better response is to open your heart to those around you.

To do this you must overcome your fears.
Your fear of strangers, your fear of sickness, your fear of commitment.....

And in doing this we develop our hearts and increase our capacity to love.

It is this Love which is the purpose of life.

Celebrity Satanists.

It has been said that there are only two things in the world - Love and Fear.

So could it be that those rock stars, movie stars, and sportsmen and women who have sold their souls to the devil were motivated by fear?

(a)  There is a fear of failure which motivates people to cheat in this kind of way.
The idea of a contract with Satan lends a sense of certainty to the transaction.
They seem to prefer this to the uncertainty of faith in God.
They ignore the uncertainty of the devil's existence.
They rely on reports of what has gone before.

But if they tell you to lie the chances are that they are lying to you in the first place.

(b)  The major fear that motivates them, however, is the fear of punishment and judgment by God which causes them to turn away in the first place.
Believing the negative theology of the Church and internalizing it, they may feel that they have been rejected by God and thus go to the opposition - the devil.
So the fear of God, which is everywhere in the Church, may kick start Satanism and cause people to prefer the devil to God.

Fear is intimately involved in this process.
It affects their decision both directly and indirectly.

The News.

Where does our fear come from?

Mostly it comes from the television news.

We hear of people being raped and murdered and our reaction is to be sensible about it and steer clear, not take any risks, and stay safe.

This combines with our instinctive fear of strangers to create the society that we now live in.

Many people in church will act according to the news rather than the Gospel.
That is why it does not go past the church's door.

Unless, of course, our fear of God is greater than our fear of others.
This is hypocrisy.

Greater fear is not the answer.

It is the absence of fear in the presence of God which will open our hearts to others.

Then we can love God and love our neighbor.

The Good Samaritan.

In the story of the Good Samaritan the priest and the Levite pass the bashed and bleeding man on the other side of the road.

What is it that makes them behave this way?

It is fear.
Fear of being attacked and robbed.
Fear of being ambushed.
Fear of blood (impurity).

It is the despised Samaritan who has the courage, or perhaps the lack of fear, to help the injured man.

We see this in our society today.
People who have been attacked in the streets are ignored by passers by and good Samaritans are often attacked.

So, instead of making moral judgments about who is charitable and who is not, we should be addressing our fears.

What is it that makes us overcome our fears and act in a loving and charitable manor?

Compassion for another's suffering can help us overcome our fears.
Tears melt the heart.
Then we can feel love for our neighbor.

Who is my neighbor?

If God is our Father then all men and women are our neighbors.

Back to the 50s.

Many people in the Church are nostalgic about the 1950s - the time when the churches were full.

But my recollection of Church in the 1950s is that it was dead.

The Anglican Church used a set service in which we repeated the same words every week.  It seemed to me that people were just reciting the words by rote and not thinking about the meaning at all.

Apart from that the Churches were teaching Fall/Redemption Christology.

And it was made perfectly clear that obedience to God meant obedience to those in positions of worldly authority - namely the rich conservative establishment.

There may have been bums on seats and money in the coffers but in my experience no one was practicing Christianity even as it was presented.

So there is no point going back to the 50s.
It wasn't any good then.

What is needed is a New Reformation - a total overhaul of the Churches' teachings.

Church theology should be purged of the negative ideas that have grown up like weeds around the figure of Jesus and they should be replaced with positive ideas like Original Blessing and Unconditional Love.

The First World.

Why is it that we in the First World allow the inequalities and injustices that plague our world?

We work long hours and are on call 24/7.
This occupies a lot of our mental panorama.

We are obsessed with sports and celebrities.
This distracts us from any idealistic endeavor.

We rely on shopping and expensive holidays to compensate for overwork.
This is very good for the economy and ensures that we have to work hard to pay for it all.

The media is controlled to such an extent that we seldom see what is happening in the Third World.  There is no news of exploitation or land grabs because the media is owned by those who exploit and grab.

All financial information is private.
This ensures that no one ever finds out who is perpetrating injustices in our world.

We sit back and take our dividends and never ask any questions.
Our questions would not be answered if we did ask them.

The occasional begging letter registers as a minor irritation.

So everything is geared towards the status quo.

In fact the gap between the world's rich and poor has increased since the free-market economy became our god.

We are just now beginning to see that we have been deceived.
But we were willing participants in this deception.
We deceived ourselves.

We readily accept our First World moral ease.
We are so good.

But this is a veneer which hides what our companies and governments do.

No one wants to question the status quo.

We blame refugees and immigrants and ignore the poor and hungry.

Is it any wonder that Third World countries resort to violence and civil war?

We oppress them indirectly through our companies and corporations.

And no one asks any questions.

Unconditional Love.

It may be said that the concept of unconditional love is not an immediately apparent aspect of Aquarius, which is ruled by Uranus and Saturn.

But; apart from the fact that the spiritual knowledge, which the water in the jar is said to represent, is all about love; there are several aspects which relate to the planet Venus, which represents love.

In the myth of Uranus (father sky) he is married to his mother Gaia (mother earth) and is castrated by his son Saturn who conspires with his mother Gaia as revenge for burying her children deep in the underworld.

Gaia is represented by the astrological sign of Taurus, an earth sign which is ruled by Venus.

Aphrodite (Venus) was said to be born, like the foam of the sea,  from the severed genitals of Uranus.

It may be said that Uranus regains his power (his severe genitals) through love (Aphrodite/Venus) and is thus re-united with his wife Gaia (Taurus/Venus).

So the philosophy of unconditional love gives power to Aquarius and harmonizes with the other aspects which relate to love in the symbolism of Aquarius.