There is a time in our lives
That we don't kow exactly what to do
So, it's a time of reflection
A time to stop doing something
But sometimes we didn't want stop doing that
And time is passing by, passing by
How difficult it is to start again
To feel motivated to
I simply can not think as I used to
The beautiful things I used to see
Are in fact not so beautiful
But there is hope
Yeah, I have not forgot Him

DEATH (some thoughts)

Death frustrates hopes, dreams, loves, friendships, happiness. We are not going to see anymore some known smiles, voices, ways of being, ways of living, and some expressions because those who possessed them are gone.
Only memories, frustration, and the feeling that we lost something are left. Death frustrates, because who really wants to die? (There are some disillusioned of living who would not like to be born). I understand that we were born to live.

This feeling of living, of wanting to live was plainly expressed within us when we were children. Children do not know what death is. If we stop and look at children’s simplicity, we are going to notice that for them life is eternal. When they grow up they come across with the reality that death exists, something that frustrates, hurts, causes pain; then there is the feeling that life ends.

Why this feeling of frustration? Because God created us for living, for expansion, for a continuous blooming, for knowing, enterprising, doing. In God’s creation, we do not find another living being that entrepreneurs as we, who thinks about the past, lives the present and plans the future.

We are the only beings to record history and pass it on from generation to generation, to pile up knowledge and with it solve problems. If human beings died or not when yet they were in the paradise, it doesn’t matter (this discussion would be very long with many saying yes, and many saying no). What matters is that in the paradise the human beings used to live next to God and didn’t know what contradiction to God was.

Thus, living or dying did not matter, because we would be always living in him or not, dying would be as to be absorbed by Him. Death causes frustration because we are totally conscious that we broke off relations with God and consequently our years of living shortened.
In a distant past, according to the Bible, we used to live nine hundred, eight hundred, seven hundred years, but this was shortening that today to be eighty years old is a great victory.
But if we wait in Him, who is the life, to have the answer for our questions about why we don’t stay here forever along with our beloved ones and the things we love, we will understand that dying is not the end, it is much more the beginning.
Jesus came from eternity to give us hope, to tell us that there is continuity and to show us the way to get it. He himself is the way. Jesus said: I am the way, the truth and the life [...] (John 14:16); I am the light of the world, who follows me is not in darkness, but will have the light of life (John 8:12).

If there were a time that we didn’t know the right direction and lived in darkness, without seeing ahead, now with Him, we see enough to know where we are going to, to be sure that our life doesn’t end here. Jesus is the comfort for the bad feeling of losing someone.
In Him our soul is linked to what is eternal, in Him we know what victory over ourselves and over our doubts is. In Him hope gets wings and we imagine how is to be there in heaven, how those we lost here are living there. In Him we anticipate the future in constant prayer.
Thus, if we see death through the perspective how Jesus taught us, death’s frustration power gives way to the power of hope, because it will be through death that we will see Him face to face, that we will be reunited with those beloved ones who have already gone, that we will leave behind all weakness of this our body and will clothe ourselves with the best thing God has prepared for us, as Paul said: “of incorruptibility”.

No, death cannot stop us because we were created for living. As it is true that death will come one day, for some very soon, for others after many years, it is also true that what it will reveal will be very real, and death will mean just a fragment of time of the transition to life.

I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full (John 10:10), said Jesus. That’s it, life will prevail to those who believe in the life that is Jesus. Apart from me you can do nothing (John 15:5), He said.

José Martins

I Am the True Vine

"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful” (John 15: 1,2), said Jesus.



Jesus used the metaphor of growing grapes to pass on the kind of relationship he wanted between us, him, and the father. Also, teaching this way, he would trigger in the mind of those listening to him the process of analogy between the cares one has to have in growing a vineyard (in order that it can be fruitful) and life according to the gospel.

Departing from this point, there is a question: How is a vineyard pruned to bear good and abundant fruit crop after crop – bear much more fruit – sort of characteristic Jesus points out as being what the father looks for?
Several answers can be given to this question, leading us to think about how we should live as servant's of the Lord.

If you want to have a good vineyard, you have to choose a proper place to plant it, which involves a good reception of sunlight, that is, sunlight in the morning and in the afternoon. Sunlight is fundamental for a vineyard development and maintenance, it influences its metabolism.

If you want to have a good vineyard, a good soil is also necessary. A mixture of clay and sand is appointed as preferable by technicians, but if the soil is not so good as it should be, it is possible to improve it; it can be done using different know-hows.

If you want to have a good vineyard, you have to choose a grape variety that fits the region you intend to cultivate it. There are grape varieties that do not adapt themselves to certain places. It can determine the success of your vineyard.

If you want to have a good vineyard, you need to prune and train it properly.

Of the four items mentioned above, Jesus concerned himself only with the fourth one, pruning.
Being so, we are going to take that the other three items for having a good vineyard had already been fitted, mainly when the grape grower is the one Jesus refers to in his story.

Take note that two prunings are presented in John’s text. One refers to cutting off the branch in the base, detaching it totally from de vineyard: he cuts off (another version says he takes it out). The other kind of pruning is a pruning with reminiscent: he cleanses, prunes, clips.

Before we go into the process of pruning a grape vine, I’d like to call your attention to the way Jesus approached the matter in those verses. The verbs cut off or take out along with cleanse are incisive words. These words do not express possibility, hypothesis, probability, but they are saying that it is what in fact happens, they have a factual connotation.

Thus, in deed, God cuts off, God prunes, God cleanses, independently of what one can think about it or argue. The pruning process is for everything (for everyone), even the healthiest branches, the most perfect branches will go under it, because it keeps the vineyard healthy. The church that is going to heaven, says the Word, is clean, unspotted, irreprehensible, and shows in its face the brightness of the zeal of the great vine grower (Ephesians 5.25).

Another interesting point in Jesus’ words is that he did not mention anybody else who has the power to cut off branches, but only the father. Only the father can cut off and only he can declare who is cut off. We do not have this authority. And also he alone can attach again, graft in; and in fact this is possible in a vineyard.

Well, said that, we move on to the process or processes of pruning. My emphasis here will be on pruning for fructification which is called (in Brazil) pruning by clipping. My emphasis will not be on mere extirpation (even that sometimes extirpation is also a kind of cut that can improve the quality of the fruit). Therefore, I am going to deal with three kinds of pruning: formation pruning, production pruning, and green pruning.

Formation pruning is performed when the new grape vine is one year old. During the first year, the vineyard has to grow free any-which-way, extracting as most as it can from the soil, strengthening its roots. And here there is a lesson for us believers who sometimes easily criticize those who have recently received Jesus.

Production pruning is done right after the grapevine bears its first fruit. It is done when its branches are ready for another crop.
In the formation pruning, branch excess, flat branches, sick branches, branches not well disposed in the grapevine, creating problems to the vine grower to direct them as he wants, are cut off. May the vine grower of our souls cleanse everything preventing the fructification of his presence in us and that he may find in us the humbleness to allow him to direct us to activities that better please him in his work.

Production pruning can be performed in a mixed way, that is, interrelating a branch pruned very short (a spur) with a longer branch, trimmed only in its extremity. This kind of cut eases the renewal of aerial parts of the vineyard, otherwise the quality of fruit production will decay rapidly.

What is a spur? It is a branch from which grape bunches had come out in the last crop and now it needs to renew for the next crop. From the spur a new branch will come out which will be a long branch giving fruit in the next crop.

Production pruning, therefore, teaches us that not all of us can occupy the same position at the same time in the work of the Lord. There is a time for everything. All in good time. In the vineyard of the Lord, there is a time to sprout again; it’s just let him prune us and prepare us for this. The problem is that few of us want to turn back and then later go ahead strengthened, in favor of the vineyard, in favor of everybody. Many of us are only concerned with our personal ministry.

For some, the ministry is their all in all. They are from the ministry, for the ministry, all is about the ministry, ministry … ministry … ministry of themselves, and get out of the way you if you are seen as a threat to their ministry. They are like branches that only want to stretch out, stretch out (sucking to themselves only the strength that should go to other branches, to the fruit).

A vineyard that is not pruned grows excessively, becomes too strong, wild, transferring all its energy to branches and leaves instead of the grapes.

Wish we were like Daniel who was able to be in the spotlight in Nebuchadnezzar’s kingdom and in the underground in Belshazzar’s up to be brought up from his apparent abandonment to deliver a word of God to Belshazzar, revealing to everyone the fruit of one submitted to the will of God, to God’s paths.

The spur in the vineyard gives me the lesson that I am not the unique branch in the vineyard. Others also have to have opportunity; and the vine grower wants things this way and will make them happen.

Now, let us deal with green pruning and some lessons it can gives us. The green pruning normally is performed in the summer. In the green pruning, breaking shoots, trimming shoots, trimming leaves, clipping tendrils and sucker-shoots, eliminating and or thinning bunches, and twisting branches are some technical procedures that help to improve the grape vine.

Now, let’s see each of these procedures of the green pruning I mentioned:

When the grape grower breaks shoots, he cuts off exceeding shoots (called sucker-shoots), which block the proper flow and direction of the sap, draining the grape vine. Spiritually speaking, it is not different in our lives; lots of things want to sprout in our lives hindering God’s Spirit to flow within us. These things can be the manifestation of sadness towards a fellow, individualism, self-interest, hierarchical quarrels … all of them shoots the grape grower has to trim away, otherwise they will become canes taking up place where they should not, draining fruit quality.

When the shoot trimming is performed, the grape grower clips the extremities of the shoots, procedure that helps the buds (bulges from which the bunches appear) to come out. Shoot trimming helps to balance the vegetation, increasing the weight and the quality of the grapes.

Another benefit of this procedure is the improvement of air flow and sunlight within the vineyard, which prevents it from healthy problems.
He is the Sun of Justice, who wants to take up place in our lives, right there in the inner parts of our souls, so that the healthiness caused by our communion with him appears in us through what we reflect, that is, through our fruit.

When the leaf trimming is performed, the grape grower removes “the leaves covering the bunches, eliminating at most two leaves per shoot, aiming to balance the foliage and the number of fruit. It aims at improving the flow of air and sunlight within the vineyard. It will provide a better efficiency in the control of fungal diseases, especially in a large vineyard. The leaf trimming must be done carefully because if more leaves than necessary are trimmed the vine grape can be damaged, resulting in less sugar in the grapes, in immature branches, as well as in sun-burned berries” (text from EMBRAPA).

The leaf trimming teaches us about the necessary balance leaf-fruit. It also teaches us that appearance in the Lord’s vineyard has its importance when it is proportional to the fruit and in behalf of the fruit. Appearance has to give room for life so that life can be manifested, be improved, be enlightened (which is the airflow within the vineyard – the good wind of the Holly Spirit and the light of the Sun of Justice and his effects). Some people see legalism in almost everything in Christian life, but a small pinch of modesty, in my point of view, is indispensable for a good testimony.

Removing tendrils and sucker-shoots – tendrils are natural thin strings that climbing plants have to grab to what is close to them. They are responsible for tying the canes and maintaining the plant spreading.
Sucker-shoots are “secondary shoots coming out to the cave of the leaves”. They work as sap suckers, hindering the proper growth of good shoots, and bunches. They also cause excess of shadow within the vineyard” (Text from EMBRAPA).




What could we say about tendrils? When they are not removed, they spread strangling leaves, the whole grapevine. They have to be maintained when they are necessary to fix some canes, if not, they will drain sap and will weaken the plant.

The tendrils remind us those people who characteristically go on without measuring consequences, without judging whether they are causing damage to others or not. Ahab and Gehazi of The Old Testament were such a kind of believers, people interested in themselves only.

God cleanses the branches so that they can give more fruit; so, the possessive characteristics of tendrils do not find room in the Lord’s vineyard.

Concerning the sucker-shoots, called sap suckers, they are unnecessary sprouts appearing in the canes, obstructing the sunlight to come in properly. Along our spiritual life, we build up our own theologies to protect ourselves and maintain our spiritual vices, developed along the time such as: little lies, evangelical manias (sayings, determinations without biblical support), self-defense (spiritual comfort in using the name of Jesus). All of them are vices that merely make us identifiable as christians, but that at the same time reveal our lack of understanding of the Gospel. God desires to take away these shoots that have much more to do with religion only than with the Truth.

Removing or thinning bunches is necessary to “balance productivity and avoid overload. This procedure enhances more uniform and more tasteful bunches” (text form EMBRAPA). Some bunches come out before due time without proper formation; others come out after the grapevine is already loaded, had produced as much as fruit the grape grower intended. These two situations cause quality decay to the vineyard and ought to be treated. Also in this procedure bunches with delayed development in comparison to others are removed.

It is from us believers, branches of the vineyard, that the fruit has to come out, but sometimes we don’t show what the Lord is waiting from us. We don’t do our best. Love is not present, sincerity is lacking, and so the value of our fruit goes down. Each grape vine is potentially able to produce a certain amount of good fruit. Quantity can not surpass quality.

Thus, quantity is justifiable as much as quality exists. It is quality that has to constraint quantity. The wine Jesus provided in the Cana of Galilee’s wedding was of quality, he didn’t provide a poor wine like the one the guests had drank before. If Jesus’ wine was fruit of a real grapevine, without doubt, it was a grapevine of quality. That teaches us that he is concerned with quality.

Some churches intend to grow as some ministries that are booming and then start imitating and consequently they go astray, bearing fabricated fruit, fruit of marketing production, things that are not from a genuine Gospel. Growth is valid and authentic when it is balanced by quality; it is what Jesus’ vineyard makes us understand.

We've got to ask ourselves what is the sign of quality in the fruit of the true vineyard, of which kind of fibers it is constituted, spiritually speaking.
Let’s discuss one sign and constitution: truth. What does not come out of truth, can be men’s interest, can proceed from men, but cannot be from God. Many pursue a sort of growth that jeopardizes their fruit quality and authenticity. They pursue a fruit of odd constitution, where truth doesn't play its role.

Branch twisting is a technique that aims to wake up a dormant grapevine (when the foliage is developing) after the winter pruning, when the foliage is irregular, delays or when the grape grower intends to advance the foliage. How many of us do not need to be awakened by the Lord and rise again to bring out a good fruit?

I could say much more about the pruning process for a good grape vine, but it only would strengthen the fact that when Jesus taught through the vineyard pruning metaphor, he showed us that God’s church is a church free from impediments (he walks through it without any obstacle), in which the disguise of denominational interests, ministerial interests, financial interests, domination interests do not find room. And if they do, they do only in the mimic of Jesus’ church that some have built up, never in the church which goes to heaven.

Still, to conclude: when a vineyard is pruned, it drops sap from the cuts, taking time to the sap stops. Nobody likes to be cut, pruned, corrected, and questioned. That’s hurt. We like to be in a comfortable position, but God sees his church as a unit with common goals, and as a unit he takes care of it and guides it in his will.
Even if the branch is sound, it will be pruned at the proper time. Pruning is the maintenance of health both of the branches and of the whole vineyard.

Jesus being the vineyard gave himself over to be pruned so that we could bear fruit.


Concluding texts:


I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful (John 15: 1,2).

Hebrew 12:11 - No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

Romans 8:28 – And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

Let’s think about this!

Revelation 01 audio

Robotization of God

Some has seen God as if he were a machine responding to their commands. They have done with God what they do with a Machine Teller.

They come to God with a password which was given to them, inculcated, and press the “buttons of the secrets of God” and try to get what they want.

Many are the promoters of this kind of gospel, gospel of passwords, keys, secrets, movements, the gospel of those who have found out “what to do to have what they want”.

The God of the Bible has never been an instrument in the hands of anybody, never was obliged to do anything, never betrayed His own words that we could press Him to get what we desire.
Yet, we have to have in mind that if we want to enjoy the facilities of a Machine Teller, we have to have credit. The money we cash there is fruit of our work, the result of what we do for living.

I remember once that my son said: Dad, it’s just to press the button, so why don’t you take out more money?
My son could not realize that to take money or more money out, we would have to have worked for that. First we work, produce (bare fruit) and then we have what to take out.
I suppose that with God it is not different. If we want something from Him, we are not going to have it if we don’t have credit with Him, if we don’t deserve it.

Deserve here can’t be understood that we can reach something from God by means of our deeds, but it has to be understood that the undeserved favor of God, His grace, is within us because we are in Him by free choice and now the grace brings forth fruit in us glorifying God.
Deserve here is understood as we have to understand Jesus’ teaching to the woman he delivered from her sins and from the Pharisees’ hands to kill her, “go and do not sin anymore”. There was condition for things continue going well for her, it was not sinning again as a result of following Jesus with all her soul.

It doesn’t mean that God is demanding something in exchange for what He did and yet is going to do for us; it is that there isn’t any way of following Jesus without being with our whole soul and heart. If our following Him is not this way, it can not produce legitimate fruit and consequently it will not bring legitimate God’s blessings upon us.

Deserve here is to serve Him without bargaining (only Him knows which is our intention) and then His mercy simply makes us deserve his blessings. How to bring forth fruit and receive his blessings without faith? It is the simple, dependent faith, unclothed of any self-interest that makes us be in credit, credit which is not our ultimate goal, but that it is at our reach justly because it is not our major goal. Our ultimate goal is to be with Him because He is our all in all. This is the kind of fruit, the sort of production that must appear in our lives if we want to be targets of His love, and we only can get this fruit and production when we depend on Him (which is a constant battle within us).

Back to which I was discussing before, and reinforcing what I have already said, we have credit with God when we produce truth, integrity, and sincerity. This is to seek the kingdom of God firstly and have the other things added.
God is not a machine that simply responds to simple codes such as: I determine, it is done, it is broken, I order, get out this, get out that; how to receive if there isn’t enough fund and maybe my account is already blocked?

We can only reap what we have planted. But many have taught to reap, to have, to determine victory, prosperity in order to acquire a car, a house without sowing true gospel, planting the true gospel, and so by God’s mercy reap.
Look, he who lives the true gospel has his search centered in the truth, in the Lord, and not in that that He can give; the center is who He is.
Therefore, God is not a cybergod at our disposal with a pleasant interface and whether it is not pleasant we adapt as we wish.
The Lord said: I am the Lord and there is no one but me.


How to cope with this?

Choosing whom to serve, to God and His Christ and His word or to a gospel of appearance only, which has been transmuted from time to time according to the will of self-seeking people. Pity that many people of good will allow themselves to be taken by what is apparent only.
It is time to us to ask ourselves if we are evangelicals only (evangelicals only have allowed themselves to go into any context of newness) or if we are of the Gospel. It seems that being of the Gospel is old-fashioned today, it is to have lost track of the “glorious walking of the church on the face of the Earth”, it is not understanding the times, understanding the “final anointment”.

How to cope with this?

Making a choice for what is true even that we have to go out of scene, even that we have to stop (apparently) doing what everybody was used to seeing us to do and for which we were praised. If what we used to do and still do was not or is not centered in being of the gospel, it’s not worth going on.
But whether the case is not to stop, let us change our attitude, even that our attitude change makes us to be stopped.
We will be doing more for God if we are able to live more intensely the truth, which doesn’t necessarily means appearance, signs, to be prosperous, the way it is emphasized nowadays.

How to cope with this?

Rejecting a sort of steward god, the robotized Christ, man’s servant that the evangelical religion of many has tried to put as true in these days of lack of discernment.
Some time ago, I read an article about the three Rs of victory (not three Vs, and also not an article concerning simple victory keys) that fits well in this context. They were:
R of recognizing, R of rejecting, and R of resisting.

We can only win (or at least we fight to) recognizing the situation we are involved in; we can only win rejecting such situation; we can only win resisting the offers belonging to which we recognized and rejected.
So, if we realize that the kind of gospel I described in the beginning of this text is not a gospel that really feeds the soul, it is not true and from the truth, we have to recognize that it isn’t of any good, leaving to us, to reject it and resist it.

When the Lord is not the primacy, we end up like those who Paul the apostle didn’t dare to compare himself with and didn’t want those following Christ’s teachings, who he preached to, did: “For we dare not class ourselves or compare ourselves with those who commend themselves. But they, measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise” (2 Corinthians 10.12).

Therefore, whatever we do spiritually can only be associated to which predominates in the religious world, in the evangelical world, if it passes in the test (specifically and exclusively) of association to and comparison with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and this only occurs when we are ready to lose for gaining (Mark 8.35), because according to the Gospel there isn’t real gain just because the majority, apparently, is gaining; on the contrary, what really is taken into account in the Gospel is the legitimacy of the gain.

To conclude, it is worth reminding that “the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, And the haughtiness of men shall be brought low; The LORD alone will be exalted in that day” (Isaiah 2.17), because “[…] know this day, and consider it in your heart, that the LORD Himself is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other” (Deuteronomy 4.39).

May God give us victory so that we may transmit with all our heart, with all our strength, something more resembled with which Jesus taught, the apostles taught than what we have seen and may have lived.

José Martins

The message of The Secret has already been manifested in Gospel preachings

You’re a visual being, you have to visualize what you want. Delete the negative image of this or that. What do you want? Money, house, a car, a good job? You have to visualize it. Create a picture in your mind of what you want. God wanted that Abraham visualized the great nation he would be. Abraham only got God’s promises after learning this.

More or less this was the message I heard two months ago. Is it Gospel? Any resemblance with The Secret book is only mere coincidence.
What a spiritual poorness to try to fit the message of Christ with positivist speculations!
It is outrageous to see how preachers of “another gospel”, which is not the gospel of the Bible, who have seized TV broadcasting space, where it could be delivered the gospel of freedom, teach speculations that Jesus never taught in order to attract incautious and desperate people, seeking immediate solutions for their lives.

They are preachers of a gospel of marketing in which what matters the much is the figures (of people as well as of dollars they can get).
If visualize and visualize were the answer, all positivist philosophy followers would be rich. But who has become rich are the proponents of these teachings. And the worst news is that this is around the country (Brazil). And how it makes churches to be packed!
This message runs over everything, even the truth (but the truth in the end will prevail) in order to achieve its intended goals.

These preachers came up with more one thing to believers get stressed: the production of images – Oh, I have to visualize this and that; I can’t make this or that image or I won’t reach my goals (which usually are material ones).

I had already expected to hear this kind of message from the mouth of preachers after the release of The Secret. It didn’t take too long. The resemblance is astonishing. Is the Spirit of Christ inspiring them this way? I don’t think so. I think it is the spirit of self interest that is boosting them to do this, the spirit of exaltation (not of Christ’s humbleness in their lives), the spirit of greed, of self projection …
Where are we going to end up? Every day something new comes out, another newness. This newness dynamic is which has fed this prosperity gospel and has maintained it strong during the years, despite the fact that there are many people frustrated with the few concrete results it has brought to their lives.
Taking into account the time the gospel of prosperity has been preached in Brazil, believers had to be the richest and the most influential people in the country. It did not happened and has not happened because IT WAS NOT THE MESSAGE THAT JESUS PREACHED!!


José Carlos Martins

Quantum Physics and Prosperity Proponents

Quantum Physics (quantum mechanics) is in the loop for many spiritualists, esoteric proponents and it is making its way in the evangelical grounds in order to explain miracles and how to receive them.

But what is quantum physics about?

Amir O. Caldeira, professor of the Gleb Wataghin Physics Institute of the Unicamp (University of Campinas – Brazil), defines it as being “the theory that describes the behavior of matter within the scale of minute things, that is, it is the physics of matter components: atoms, molecules, and nucleus ...”
He, yet, explains that without the knowledge of quantum physics we would not have CD, remote control, microwave oven, computer, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, in sum all high-tech developments.
(http://www.comciencia.br/reportagens/fisica/fisica02.htm).

And for Osvaldo Pessoa Jr. (Professor of the Department of Philosophy, Course of Philosophy, Languages and Human Sciences, of Sao Paulo University), quantum physics “describes microscopic objects, such as atoms, and their interaction with radiation (light etc.)”.
Therefore, it deals with microscopic, subatomic particles, which make up matter and consequently are matter as well.
Quantum physicists, through several experiments have proved that light, which is energy, despite it is not palpable, is matter. For instance, the light materiality can be felt on one’s skin, depending on the kind of light, by its heat.
Light according to quantum physics is composed of quanta, a number of measurable particles (blocks of matter) that emanate energy. Not only light but everything we can see or cannot see with our eyes in nature is made up of these blocks of minute energetic particles.

What is the relationship between this and spirituality?

The answer is that some people are using quantum physics theories in order to try to explain every kind of phenomenon, including spiritual phenomena (or supposed as such).

Almir Caldeira’s words help us to understand that this is a tendency
(http://www.comciencia.br/reportagens/fisica/fisica02.htm):

“[...] all is indicating that quantum mechanics is the correct theory to describe physic phenomena in every energy scale”.

Add to this the fact the some quantum physicists, besides being physicists, are spiritualists and, thus, they end up linking both things and theorizing about spirituality through quantum physics.
I would dare to say that the nonscientific usage of quantum physics begins at this very point where, in my point of view, speculation gains ground.

Many of these speculators claim that the elements forming what we desire and want are in the universe and through our thoughts (which for some are also matter, since the manifestation of thoughts can be observed by electronic apparatus) we can make them gather together, bringing to reality (materiality) what is desired. This argument of the modern positivists is well propagated in the book and film The Secret (commented in previous posts).

Evangelicals’ bonds with prosperity theology are also being influenced, in the heat of the moment, by thoughts of quantum physics and are producing the discourse that we can bring to existence what we think.

Prosperity theology in its pursuit for innovation is using arguments based on quantum physics in an attempt to validate its discourse and practices, that is, it is trying to pass on and sell the idea that we are the owners of the miracle and that miracles only depend on us to come true; we are the ones who are going to attract the energetic material elements and then bring into existence what we want.

There are preachers of prosperity claiming that the smallest particle of matter is the sound. Therefore, for these preachers the words of desire, of faith, have the power to materialize desired things, because God created the world, and all which is in it, through the sound of his words, through the expression let there be. Such theorization, in addition to the understanding that the gospel to be preached is the gospel of the kingdom (and not only the gospel of salvation) is one of the strategies to convince neophytes and gospel workers eager for newness.

For prosperity preachers, the gospel of the kingdom is the one which brings heaven’s dimension to earth in that in heaven any sickness, poorness, lack of this or that cannot exist for just a while.
The gospel that emphasizes affirmations that bring into existence what we desire is seeking by means of quantum physics new elements in order to strengthen itself (one of the prosperity theology’s strategy to maintain itself in evidence and to go on attracting sympathizers for many years is its constant innovation, which doesn’t mean biblical foundation).

Sincere quantum physicists disagree the kind of speculation that is going on lately about spiritual things through the science they study, and they see this as just attempts to give to spiritual theories labels of scientific stuff, credibility.

Writer Marcelo Druyan, one who discusses the true and the false science, thinks the following about the usage of quantum physics to validate spiritual theories:
Pseudoscience seems to have the right to take for itself jargons of Science and make low and poor philosophy. Besides breaking down the door of valid scientific theories, they allow themselves to have a promiscuous relationship with religion and mysticism. They take definitions and concepts out of the original context to put them in different contexts, where theories attempt to prove suppositions and not to explain an experience.
Quantum Mysticism is not just a thing of the moment, it came to stay, it is there! In quantum mysticism, prayers get heaven because they take advantage of the principle of non-locality. The same occurs with telepathy and clairvoyance. Demons are the manifestation of evil which abides in a holographic universe. The saints look after everybody because “everything is in everything”. And God, at least, can play his dice game in peace, hidden in the horizon of events of a huge black hole.
http://www.ceticismoaberto.com/ceticismo/misticismo_quantico.htm

What advice does the Word of God give to us about all of this?

Peter, in his second letter (2 Peter 1:16), advises us to be cautious regarding fabricated inventions strategically organized, which he calls fables:

For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty.

Gospel with feet steadfastly on the ground is something, it seems, that has become hard to find. The keynote today seems to be newness, it doesn’t matter how it comes; what matters are the results coming from the last thing, the thing of the moment, mainly financial results. All has showed us that leaders are being chanted not by the “truths” they have found in the innovations, but by the profits the innovations have given to their proponents. The materialization of properties, comfort and trips are things that, it seems, leaders have enjoyed more then their followers.

How can you say this? somebody could ask me. I have this impression by what it is seen today, by the fruit, by the testimony, on account of the human glory some leaders are receiving, against what they are not able to teach, demystifying wrong understandings (of their followers), that is, that they are not worthy being flattered, divinized. Or would I be materializing mistaken thoughts, which make me see a reality that in deed is not what I’ve seen, at least, in the lives of a great number of our leaders today? (Of course that those who have lived honestly according to the Gospel do not fit in this situation).



Let’s think of it!

José Martins