Theocratic Bipolarity:
The Bipolar Evidence for God and Jesus

Patrick Reany [Christian novelist, essayist, and occasional philosopher]

6 March 2023

You either get control of your lusts and feelings of entitlements
or they will get control of you. -- Ilfinor

The purpose of this essay is to offer a philosophical argument why God
has designed the world to provide scientific/historical evidence that is
purposely sometimes in favor of His existence and the Gospel and
sometimes not in favor of His existence and the Gospel. Historical
evidence for the rabbi Jesus is there, but it's not overwhelming. Scientific
evidence for the Bible is there: we have the lack of billions of human
bones in the earth and a very rapid ascent from so-called primitive man
to our highly complex modern world. We have the many level layers of
sediments in the Grand Canyon and we have some mummified, not
petrified, dinosaur bones, which seems impossible according to Old-
Earth dogma. But we also have supposedly old ages from radiometric
dating, and an old universe from cosmology and just astronomical
observations. I would have to conclude that, based only on this objective
evidence, the proper conclusion to take is the hard-core: "I can't decide
yet! Give me some more time!" Well, folks, an infinite amount of time
to decide, we don't have.

Merriam-Webster defines bipolar as having or marked by two mutually
repellent forces or diametrically opposed natures or views. When it comes
to the scientific evidence concerning the creation-evolution debate, I
have to say that the evidence is and always has been bipolar, meaning
that it is not, nor ever will be, definitive for one view and against the
other view. I have seen this state of affairs persist for the last 50 some
years of my life. I have recently made peace with this state of affairs.
Why? That answer is provided at the end.

Personally, I think it's undeniable to all concerned that the scientific
evidence is ambiguous. My purpose here is to try to explain why God
did this from a philosophical viewpoint (that is, from my personal
philososphical viewpoint). Although I think that my arguments for
evidential bipolarity are strong, I don't think that my conclusions rise
to the level of Christian doctrine, so feel free to disagree with me all
you want without penalty.

So far, I've developed two major reasons why God has left evidence
for Him and His gospel ambiguous. For, if the evidence for God is
ambiguous, then

So, now I'd like to propose two extreme states of the world so that
we can do some philosophical inquiry. What if God so constructed
the world such that

  1. There were no physical/historical evidence of His existence and
    no evidence of the truthfulness of Jesus and the Gospel, or
  2. All available physical/historical evidence of His existence
    and of the truthfulness of Jesus and the Gospel is factually
    complete and honestly undeniable.

Well, if the first of these is true, then God has not left us with a
witness of His existence and rulership over the earth. But if the
opposite is true, then God has forced everyone to concede that
He exists and that the Gospel is true. Not only would this case be
a coercive situation on the people who'd prefer not to acknowledge
His existence, it's also coercive on those who would believe on Him
anyway, thereby cheating them from proof of their sincerity to
believe in God at all cost, and thus removing their personal virtue
from being a follower of Jesus. So, it seems that the logical pathway
for God is the middle ground of Theocratic Bipolarity.

We know that the Bible claims that God has left us with a witness
of His existence and presence in the earth. For starters, how about
this as an example:

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament
sheweth his handywork. -- Psalms 19:1
Or this one, from when Paul was preaching to a pagan crowd:
And saying, Sirs, why do ye these things? We also are men of
like passions with you, and preach unto you that ye should
turn from these vanities unto the living God, which made heaven,
and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein: Who in
times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways.
Nevertheless he left not himself without witness, in that he did
good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling
our hearts with food and gladness. -- Acts 14:15-17
Or this one, showing the providence of God to all things great and small,
which continues the theme that the providence of God should be
interpreted as God providing humanity a witness of His existence:
To cause it to rain on the earth, where no man is; on the wilderness,
wherein there is no man; To satisfy the desolate and waste ground;
and to cause the bud of the tender herb to spring forth? -- Job 38:26-27

Sing unto the Lord with thanksgiving; sing praise upon the harp
unto our God: Who covereth the heaven with clouds, who prepareth
rain for the earth, who maketh grass to grow upon the mountains.
He giveth to the beast his food, and to the young ravens which cry.
-- Psalm 147:7-9

Now, we humans tend to take the rains for granted as a purely natural
thing, but the scriptures are telling us otherwise. With the exception for
the modern-days, God has made sure that rain gets to all the important
places where He wants life to thrive, even if no people are there. This
has been purposed for God to be a witness of His presence and providence
over the earth. So, is it any wonder that we humans, who spend our entire
lives ignoring the presence of God, grow up to not see the evidences of
God right before our eyes? Such a person often becomes an atheist,
who later on says, "God never manifested Himself to me!" To which I
reply, "Maybe you just didn't take the time to notice." One way God tries
to reveal Himself to us is by synchronicities (special coincidences).

The following event is recorded by John. It took place at the pool of
Bethesda.

In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt,
withered, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went
down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water:
whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in
was made whole of whatsoever disease he had. -- John 5:3-4
I once heard a preacher claim in his sermon during service that he
didn't believe that this event took place, defending this charge by
saying that he didn't think that God operated that way. Really,
Preacher? That sounds like heresy to me, Preacher!

This practice of healing people this way was more than God being
nice to someone who needed a healing. God was also manifesting His
presence on earth, to the end that He did not leave that generation
-- who was at that time about 400 years beyond the last major Old
Testament prophet -- without witness of His mercy and presence.

My greatest belief in God started when I was a little kid, and it had
little to do with how I was raised, which was Catholic. By the time
I was twenty, I doubt that I could have quoted a single scripture,
which is sad, but within me I held two of the Golden Oughts close
to my heart, which are

I held to these two principles intuitively and much greater than my
parents or my culture. If I had no physical evidence of Jesus, I
would still believe in Him because of His preaching of kindness
to each other and the necessity of only speaking the truth to each
other. As I look back on my childhood, I don't remember any of
my friends holding on to these two principles nearly as strongly
as I did. Therefore, it's no mystery to me now why I held on to
Christianity in the long run, but most of my childhood friends
did not.

I want you to think deeply on this question: How differently would
your life have been if you had forced yourself to live by the rule
that you would never lie to anyone? One of the best personal
rules to live by is to never do anything that later on you'd feel
a need to lie about. Lying and willfully believing lies is one of the
cardinal sins to God (Revelation 21:27, 22:14-15). Beware those
of you who invent and believe unproven conspiracy theories! Hell
is opening its mouth wide to receive you!

So, where did I get this intuition of kindness and truthfulness?
Where did Jesus tell us is the best place to find evidence to vet
Him as the true Son of God? Ready? From the scriptures? Yes,
to a degree, if you can work it out. He said

And the Father himself, which hath sent me, hath borne
witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice at any time,
nor seen his shape. And ye have not his word abiding in you:
for whom he hath sent, him ye believe not. Search the
scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and
they are they which testify of me. -- John 5:37-39
We don't need to see the shape of God to be saved, but we do
need to hear the voice of God the Father in our beings and to
obey that heavenly calling.

So, why didn't they hear God's voice? Let's go to the prophet
closest to the time of Jesus -- Malachi. In Malachi 1 we find
that God accuses the Israelites of being backslidden by having
a terrible attitude toward their religious obligations, which
they apparelty regarded as busy-work piety that God probably
didn't even really care about. Wrong! In chapter 2 we find
that Israel had replaced truth by lies, and failed to honor the
marriage covenant.

Now, let's go back even further.

And the word of the Lord came unto Zechariah, saying,
Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, saying, Execute true
judgment, and shew mercy and compassions every man to
his brother: And oppress not the widow, nor the fatherless,
the stranger, nor the poor; and let none of you imagine evil
against his brother in your heart. But they refused to
hearken, and pulled away the shoulder, and stopped their
ears, that they should not hear. Yea, they made their hearts
as an adamant stone, lest they should hear the law, and
the words which the Lord of hosts hath sent in his spirit
by the former prophets: therefore came a great wrath
from the Lord of hosts. -- Zechariah 7:8-12
At this point is revealed, not a contradiction, but a duality.
Jesus often spoke in terms of dualities. To hear the Father's
voice, either at the time of Zechariah or at Jesus's time, was
to receive some kind of impression or intuitive communication
directly from the Father. But the second notion of hearing is
to receive it and conform one's beliefs and actions to it (which
means to have the Father's words abiding in you). It's this
latter sense why the backslidden are backslidden because
they pulled away the shoulder, when the Father tried to
contact them, and closed their ears, and thus they did not
have the words of the Father abiding in them. And because
of that, when they heard the words of Jesus, they were unable
to graps it as the words of Truth from the Father. But when
I heard the words of Jesus I intuitively knew they were truth.
That's one big reason why I believe and most other people
on the face of the earth don't.

The problem is not the lack of the historical or physical
evidence to prove God, for they won't. They aren't designed
to. The issue is whether we are willing to let the Father speak
His commandments to us in our inner persons and we retain
those commandments, which He claimed would be written
on the hearts of those who would be saved.

Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will
make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and
with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant
that I made with their fathers in the day that I took
them by the hand to bring them out of the land of
Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I
was an husband unto them, saith the Lord: But this
shall be the covenant that I will make with the house
of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put
my law in their inward parts, and write it in their
hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my
people. -- Jeremiah 31:31-33
And here we have revealed one of the biggest and most
important misconceptions in both Christendom and in
the atheists who attack it: We are supposed to have the
moral laws of God written on our hearts prior to being
saved by accepting Jesus -- not afterwards! Most people
who are truly saved are not saved because of the external
evidence (i.e., that of science and history and so-called
rationality) but because of the inner witness of God,
who did the groundwork in their hearts before they
heard the Gospel of Jesus.

So, when William Lane Craig claims that he would
continue to be a believer in Jesus on the basis of the
internal witness of the Holy Spirit in his heart, even if
all external evidences were to somehow vanish, he is
both right and wrong. First, it's never going to happen
that all external (factual) evidence for God and Jesus is
going to vanish, because God will not leave us without
a witness of His existence. And, second, that we true
disciples are personally visited by the whole Trinity,
not just by the Holy Spirit: There is an abundant
scriptural proof in this essay that the Father in heaven
is at work to lay a foundation in us of Moral Oughts so
that, when we hear the Gospel of Jesus, we are ready
to receive both it and Him. And then there's the fact
that Jesus claimed that His sheep know His voice
(John 10:27) and that He would manifest Himself to
His true followers (John 14:21).

The real problem with Jesus's enemies is not that the Father
had failed to try to get through to them, but, rather they
refused to receive it and let it take root in their souls.

Do you see where this is going? I claim that I had those two
Golden Oughts burned into my soul by God the Father, and I
would keep them, so long as I stayed true to them. And thus I
knew intuitively that I lived in a moral universe, that no one could
argue me out of this belief. Not then, and not now, because if this
is not a moral universe governed by a moral God, where kindness
and truth are extolled, and virtue has real meaning, then this
life is a dystopia so ugly I would rather die than bother to
continue to live within it.

So, most of those religious leaders whom Jesus preached to
could have searched the scriptures but not found Jesus in them
because their hearts were not prepared to accept that Jesus is
the Messiah, because when God the Father tried to talk to them,
they weren't interested in listening to Him and certainly not in
obeying Him. They pulled away their shoulders from Him, mostly
for reasons of pride and covetousness.

The Richard Dawkins of this world are never going to convince
me that I'm wrong to believe in God and Jesus and Young-Earth
Creationism. Maybe you are impressed with his words but,
for the most part, I am not. However, I know of at least one
utterance he made that I agree with entirely:

On the contrary, if the universe were just electrons and
selfish genes, meaningless tragedies like the crashing of
this bus are exactly what we should expect, along with
equally meaningless good fortune. Such a universe would
be neither evil nor good in intention. It would manifest no
intentions of any kind. In a universe of blind physical
forces and genetic replication, some people are going to
get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you
won't find any rhyme or reason to it, nor any justice. The
universe we observe has precisely the properties we should
expect is there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil
and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.
(River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life. Basic Books,
New York, 1995, pp. 132-133.)
Really, Dawkins? Since people are also a 'natural' part of this
meaningless universe, is everything they do also without good
or evil. Are the people who sacrifice on behalf of others not
good? And are the people who are cruel to others not evil? Is
everything we do meaningless? Because, if they are, why should
we bother to do anything at all?

Well, Richard Dawkins and all atheists in his mold, I want you
to listen to a true story of mine. Back in the mid-1990s, while I
was still an unsaved person, I was driving home from work one
afternoon, when I was approaching the driveway of a parking
lot, in which a car was slowly approaching the road I was on. I
was almost up to the drive, going 45 mph (which is about 72 km/h),
when I felt something powerful inside me -- an intuition of a kind I
have not felt before or after: That car is not going to yield to me, and
thus will pull out in front of me and we will have a horrible accident.
But I was so strongly convinced by that intuition, that I immediately
pulled to my left into the next lane over, and as soon as I did, that
car did pull into the lane I had just vacated, proving that the
intuition was true. But where did that intuition come from?

Of course, to an atheist this event is totally meaningless, not
only because they don't believe in precognition of any type, but
also because, whether I got into an accident then, or even now,
is ultimately meaningless. Well, I don't happen to share that
idiotic view. Even when physical facts of the presence of a God
are presented to them, they still yell out that there is no evidence
of God. Well, God speaks to them through their consciences and
through synchronicities. They just need to start paying attention
again and to get over the bitterness they have towards God.
Bitterness towards God is irrational because He is going to
win in the end.

If Darwinianism is correct, the Dawkins view of the existence of
humans in this world is meaningless. I hope that Dawkins will
not go to his grave believeing that his entire life has been
Darwinianly meaningless. I beg your indulgence, folks, while
I claim that God had contacted me, not through the mind and
not through the heart, but through the soul, where I claim that
intuition lies. More on this later.

Jesus told us over and over again, as recorded in the Gospel of
John, that the way we are to vet Jesus as the Son of God is to
first let the Father in heaven prepare our hearts to receive it.
Let me now prove it.

The Father Himself is a witness among men that Jesus is His son.

Jesus answered and said unto them, Though I bear record
of myself, yet my record is true: for I know whence I came,
and whither I go; but ye cannot tell whence I come, and
whither I go. Ye judge after the flesh; I judge no man. And
yet if I judge, my judgment is true: for I am not alone, but
I and the Father that sent me. -- John 8:14-16
The Father Himself manifested Himself in the presence of the
people around Jesus to be a direct witness of Him in this world.
(Matthew 3:16-17, Matthew 17:5, John 12:28-30.)
Jesus answered them, and said, My doctrine is not mine, but
his that sent me. If any man will do his will [the Father's
will], he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God,
or whether I speak of myself. -- John 7:16-17
This is a huge claim that Jesus made here -- and most people who
read it don't seem to get it. Jesus tells us that this is the order of
events in your life by which you should come to Him: First, hear
and obey the words of the Father (to keep His words abiding in
your hearts). Second, hear the preaching of Jesus. Three, believe
on Jesus as the Messiah because His word found a place in your
heart and you then know intuitively with utter confidence that He
is the Son of God who came into this world to 1) defeat the works
of the Devil, 2) give us all the words the Father gave to Him to
give to us, 3) die on a cross as a propitiation for our sins. You
people who refuse to believe on Jesus because you don't think that
the scientific and historical evidence is convincing are missing that
point. God determined long ago that He was not going to win souls
that way. There are four channels of communication to God and
evidence of His existence can appear on each of those channels!
(See below.) There are three channels of evidence (beside the
physical channel, where one applies mere rational thoughts and
judgments) in which to find an abundant amount of evidence for
God and for His Gospel.
Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then?
Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this
end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world,
that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that
is of the truth heareth my voice. Pilate saith unto him,
What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out
again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him
no fault at all. -- John 18:37-38
So, Pilate was taught by none other than the Son of God, yet he
could not hear His truth. Jesus flat out told Pilate that everyone
that is of the truth heareth Him. We have to be in love with the
Truth before we can be in love with Jesus. When Pilate tells us,
"What is truth," he seems to open up a whole line of inquiry into
epistemology, but this is the wrong conclusion, I think. In saying
this, Pilate revealed himself as one who at one time admired the
truth, but also that at some point, he gave up on pursuing it.
As a result, he had sacrificed his personal character, to become
cynical and bitter. If you are going to be saved, you can't be a
quitter. Jesus commanded us to strive to enter the kingdom
(Luke 13:24). Pilate started the race, but in time he wearied
of it and quit seeking for truth, leaving himself a cynical and
lost person, content to merely go with the flow, even when he
knew the flow was leading in a false direction. He couldn't,
therefore, recognize truth, so it no longer mattered to him.

When Jesus tells us that "Every one that is of the truth heareth
my voice," He is telling us that the love of Jesus follows the love
of Truth, for Jesus claims to be the embodiment of Truth (John
14:6). This is why those who are in love of the Truth are so
easily won over by Jesus, no matter how difficult His personality
appears to be, no matter what apparent lack of physical or historical
evidence there seems to be. If you are a person who claims the
right to tell convenient lies, how will you ever become a true
believer in Jesus?

No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent
me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day. It is
written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of God.
Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the
Father, cometh unto me. -- John 6:44-45
Once again, we are told that we have to hear the voice of the
Father first -- and then act on it to keep it in our hearts -- and then
we will know intuitively that Jesus is the Messiah foretold in
the scriptures. And where do we stand with God if we don't have
an abiding love of the Truth?
Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father
ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and
abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When
he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and
the father of it. -- John 8:44
So, if you want to be of God, you'd better be of the Truth, not just
scientific truth or so-called rational truth, but all truth.

Why do you think that Jesus told us to pray directly to the Father?

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in
heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will
be done in earth, as it is in heaven.-- Matthew 6:9-10

The Engine of Salvation.

I am not the first to consider the metaphor of the engine
of salvation, but I did come to it on my own. He's how.
And Jesus answered him, The first of all the
commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our
God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul,
and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength:
this is the first commandment. And the second is
like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour
as thyself. There is none other commandment
greater than these. -- Mark 12:29-31
Both atheists and Christian apologists seem to agree
on the bugaboo that evidence for God and Jesus can
exist solely in the realm of 'facts and rationality'.
Wrong! The 'facts and rationality' are contained in
only one of four cylinders of the human psyche. Today,
in psychology, the psyche is regarded as the totality
of the human mind, conscious and unconscious
(Wikipedia). In another context, I might refer to
the psyche as the soul, but in this context, it has a
different meaning. In this context, the psyche is part
heart, part soul, part mind, and part strength
(strength of will, strength of conviction).

These are the four cylinders of salvation: heart, soul,
mind, and strength.

Since Jesus went to some effort to bring these four
aspects of our required piety to God to our attentions,
I think we ought to figure out what these really refer to.
Well, I'll pair them off this way:

I need to point out that the characteristics of these four
cylinders of our personality engine are those in operation
when we are physically, mentally, and spiritually fit and
in accord with the purposes of God. But if they're not,
some pretty wicked things can take up residence in those
cylinders which could defile them so badly that recovery
from it might be impossible.
Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are
the issues of life. -- Proverbs 4:23
So, look. It was Jesus, not me, who divided up the human
being into these four nonphysical parts. I'm just trying
to make sense of these categories. But what are they? They
are, first of all, four modes of loving God. But I contend that
they are also four modes of worshipping God and four
modes of direct and indirect communication with God.

When the Bible tells us that the love of God is shed abroad
in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us
(Romans 5:5), clearly that is God communicating to us
through our hearts. We are told to keep a good conscience
before God (1 Timothy 1:19), and the conscience lies within
the soul (at least in my categorization).

Intuition is some kind of evaluation of truth that is deeper
than rational thought.

And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the
Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him,
Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not
revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.
-- Matthew 16:16-17
What happened in this case is that God the Father somehow
impressed into Peter's soul the truth that Jesus is the Christ.
The result is that he believed with conviction something he
couldn't prove rationally. Now, I'm not saying that Peter had
no factual evidence at all to believe on Jesus as the Messiah; I'm
just saying that it wasn't enough for proof. So, for you atheists
and skeptics that demand factual proof of Jesus, you may never
receive it -- by God's design. However, abundant proof exists;
it's just not all of facts and figures. There's also proof that
registers on the three other Cylinders of Salvation.

Remember this: The righteous are mindful of the poor and help them; the wicked do not! (Proverbs 29:7)