I realize that in this article, I may appear to have an exalted opinion of my own understanding. In my defense, I think that is probably more or less true of all of us. That’s why we have arguments.

I’m just trying to be truthful, and not hide behind what I may think is likely to be accepted. I do not wish to suppose that I know any more than anyone else. The truth is that none of us know much more than we have agreed to accept, even if we only believe half of that. So I come out of my shell, and share with whoever cares, my own idea of reality. This is the best I can do for my confession of faith today. Tomorrow it may be different. I’m as human as anyone, but I hope to grow older and wiser.

It seems that we like to make things appear more complicated than they are, probably because we like to appear to be of higher understanding. But when we try to make the simple appear complex, we create confusion, even in our own minds.

Let me start by reducing the fraction to its lowest common denominator. The thing we all deal with daily, which causes dismay and confusion, is what we call good and evil. Just for starters, let’s think of them not as good and evil, but in their true meanings, which make them easier to deal with. That is intelligence and ignorance. Just to be clear, let’s understand that intelligence is always good, and ignorance is never good. Intelligence is always productive. Ignorance is destructive. We are born with the ability to understand intelligence in the many ways it applies. We express our ignorance when we think we know better, ignoring intelligence.

It strikes me as meaningful to observe the great difference between the similar words “ignore and ignorance.” Ignorance ignores intelligence. Therein lies the rub.

Intelligence prepares the soil, and plants a crop which is later harvested to the benefit the planter. Ignorance strews seed on a concrete highway, forgets it in frustration, and moves on to its next worthless activity. Intelligence has fruitful consistency, ignorance is fruitless mayhem. It has no goal, or meaning.

Man has the ability to learn and reflect intelligence. He also has the ability to become lost in meaninglessness, it is the only thing available to him without the development of his inborn, natural, ability for intelligence.

In his egotistic tendency to place the blame for his sometimes ignorant mistakes on someone else, (he is not perfect) mortal man has invented a name for ignorance, whose influence he acknowledges, and to which he considers the fault of his own ignorance. He calls it Satan. Intelligence has never been responsible for ignorance. In fact intelligence knows nothing at all about ignorance. Intelligence has never known it. Ignorance is never, and has never, been a part of intelligence. In the world of intelligence, ignorance has no existence. It is like the darkness which cannot exist where there is light, or the cold which cannot exist where there is the warmth and love. Dark, cold and ignorance, are simply the absence of things that exist.

We discredit an all knowing God, who created the entire universe, when we try to put the blame on him for our mistakes in our efforts to understand. Could He, or did He, create a confused spiritual being by mistake? No, God doesn’t make mistakes. Satan is an illusion, an invention of mankind. Ignorance and evil (its counterpart) are the efforts of mortal man to rule the material earth as his own kingdom, and to do it his own way.

To end of our soliloquy, we have for our growth only intelligence, and the love of God, the creator of all, and nothing else. The temporal can never become eternal. Our choice is more than temporal. It is simply, something … or nothing. May God bless America.

Richard Westlund is a Collins resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com