Category: Bible Studies

Verse-by-verse studies from Dara’s Bible study journals, comparing many translations and asking of every passage: what does this tell us about God?

A lone pine on a rocky overlook above the Blue Ridge mountains
1 Corinthians, Bible Studies, Spiritual Healing

Alone Except for God

Dara Dietz

Reflections on 1 Corinthians 10:30

A lone pine on a rocky overlook above the Blue Ridge mountains

“If I take part in the meal with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of something I thank God for?” (1 Corinthians 10:30, NIV)

Paul ate with a clear conscience. He thanked God for the food, and gratitude settled the matter between him and his Lord. The Remedy puts his stance simply: he would not be held hostage by the opinions of others.

The opinion of others is never meant to shape our actions. But the heart of someone searching for truth should always be a soft place in our souls.

Sometimes the person criticizing us is that searching soul. They don’t yet have the understanding, experience, or relationship with the Lord to sort out the truth behind everything they believe. It takes time and maturity before they can look at those they admire in the faith and comfortably let each person walk their own journey. We are not all learning the same things at the same time. A truth one soul finds a glorious comfort, another must struggle to accept.

So be slow to judge and slow to criticize. Trust what your past experience with someone has shown you about their heart, and give them room to explain their current choices. If something directly affects your life, ask your questions in Love, ready to hear the best answer. Don’t shy away from the questions that need asking. And when offense is given, be ready to do whatever you can to make it right. When it’s your responsibility, own it, fix it, and move on.

There will be many times we stand alone in our decisions, alone except for God. What a great exception He is. These are the times to know yourself and to know your God and Friend, the One who guided your life to that very decision. Stand firm. Know what you know. The Lord will give you the strength and wisdom to continue in the truth He has shown you.

But standing firm is not the same as closing your ears. The most valuable piece of wisdom I can offer is this: remain teachable. We can fool ourselves into believing the Lord led us to a decision simply because it makes sense to us. Stay willing to hear truth from people you respect who have also been walking with the Lord.

If God really has shown you something others don’t yet understand, their objections won’t change it. In fact, you need their objections to refine that truth even further.

Your only safeguard against fooling yourself is to stay in a truly teachable spirit.

Woodland path through green forest on the Blue Ridge Parkway
1 Corinthians, Bible Studies, Spiritual Healing

No Faster Than the Soul Can Follow

Dara Dietz

Reflections on 1 Corinthians 10:29

Woodland path through green forest on the Blue Ridge Parkway

“I am referring to the other person’s conscience, not yours. For why is my freedom being judged by another’s conscience?” (1 Corinthians 10:29, NIV)

Paul anticipates the objection. If I know an idol is nothing, and the meal in front of me is good food, why should someone else’s conscience limit what I do?

His answer isn’t that your freedom is wrong. You remain free. The question is how Love chooses to use that freedom when someone is watching who doesn’t yet understand. The Remedy puts it plainly: the confusion isn’t yours, it’s theirs. They still believe the idol has power, and you don’t want them to think you believe in their god.

This is what Love does. It protects and cares for those who lack understanding.

Think of how we raise children. Some things we model, and we smile when they try to mimic us, because their efforts build the ability to do it one day. Other things we forbid them to touch. Hand a young child an ax or a power tool, and the gift of your skill becomes a danger to them. They don’t yet have the understanding to respect the tool, the maturity to give it full attention, or the strength to handle its blowback.

Our infants in the faith need the same care. A new believer will naturally copy their mentor, even when they don’t understand what they are stepping into. Sometimes experience is how they grow. Other times, wisdom says not to introduce a truth too early, before they have laid a solid foundation to build that belief on. Wisdom and Love advance no faster than the soul can follow.

So don’t run ahead and leave your child stumbling around in confusion while you enjoy good company and a well-prepared meal. There’s no sin in that meal for the mature in faith. But your child is still on infant formula. Because you love them, you’ll share their fare and change your plans to give them time to grow up.

Stay aware of the people in your sphere of influence. The Holy Spirit, or the energy you sense in a person, or both, along with your own experience and wisdom, will guide your attention to a soul struggling alone in a moment of distress. Sit beside them. Ask why they’re troubled, and point them in a better direction. Stay a while, answer their questions, and enjoy their eager discovery of new life in Christ.

This is our work: what Love can see and do for each other.

1 Corinthians, Bible Studies, Spiritual Healing

We Are Free

Dara Dietz

Reflections on 1 Corinthians 10:25–26

Mountain view from Grandfather Mountain

“Eat anything sold in the meat market without raising questions of conscience, for ‘The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.’” (1 Corinthians 10:25–26, NIV)

The church in Corinth had a real dilemma. Much of the meat sold in the city’s markets had first been offered to pagan gods. Was it safe for a Christian to eat? Paul’s answer was simple: buy it, eat it, and don’t worry about it. Everything on this earth was made by God and still belongs to Him.

Dr. Tim Jennings’s paraphrase, The Remedy, puts the reason plainly: physical matter cannot soil the conscience. So don’t waste your emotional energy and time worrying about things that have no ability to affect your heart, mind, or body. The demons cannot affect God’s creation. They are not gods; they cannot create or change created matter. Just like us, they cannot effect a single change to a hair on their own heads.

It Starts in the Mind

The demons must live and move in the laws of reality just as we do. Food offered to an idol is physically just as it was before it was offered. It is the value we place on the act of offering a sacrifice to demons that affects us.

The effect takes place in the mind first, and then how the mind is affected transfers into the body. We can affect our own physical bodies for good or ill by the way we choose to assimilate and process the events of our life. Our past history and the way we were taught to approach an event all play a part in how something will affect us emotionally, and then move into the physical part of our lives.

But we are also free to examine our beliefs, to understand the science, truth, and reality behind an event, and to reapply it to our heart and mind. This changes how things are able to affect us.

Far More Than Food

This applies to far more than food. Think of the death of a beloved pet. A constant companion for a decade or longer cannot vanish from your life without a feeling of loss, an empty space right next to your heart. Yet the reality is you will have the company of your beloved pet again.

The Lord who loves you, and who created that creature to fill your heart and life, will return him to you with all the love he had for you when he fell asleep. So the event, though sad, is not an eternal loss for someone trusting in the Lord. You now have a deposit waiting for you in heaven. Like the loved ones we say goodbye to in this life who fall asleep trusting Jesus, he will at last be reunited with us.

An event in this life only carries the emotions, for good or ill, that we personally give to it.

We Still Choose the Good

That doesn’t mean anything goes. The food we eat and the places we go still need to be healthy for us in reality. Praying over unhealthy food, or before going into a place of entertainment that is not good for the mind or heart, will not change the effect it has on your body. Unhealthy food is still unhealthy, and mind-numbing entertainment will not become enlightening and uplifting.

You have to choose the good for yourself, and know that the devil has no ability to touch the good you choose or how it blesses you. It is your mind and your choice how you take in reality and apply it in your own heart.

We Are Free

We can live knowing the devil has no power to taint the heart and mind that trusts in the Lord, regardless of what another misguided person might do or think. Even Job, who lost nearly everything at the devil’s hand, was not touched where it counted.

We are free to live walking in heaven, surrounded each day by the glories and protection of heaven. We are free to move through this world, never needing to ask questions or be concerned with what the devil or someone else has done before us.

We are free!

Waterfall and calm pool at Linville Falls
1 Corinthians, Bible Studies, Spiritual Healing

Your Work for the Evening

Dara Dietz

Reflections on 1 Corinthians 10:28

Waterfall and calm pool at Linville Falls

“But if any man say unto you, This is offered in sacrifice unto idols, eat not for his sake that shewed it, and for conscience sake.” (1 Corinthians 10:28, KJV)

Paul has just told the believers in Corinth that they are free to eat what is set before them without asking questions. Then he adds this: if someone at the table tells you the meal was offered to an idol, don’t eat it. The Remedy puts it plainly: not because there is actually anything wrong with the food, but to avoid confusion.

Our choices matter. Someone is always watching. We need to be aware of the effect our actions have on the babies in the truth, those just learning about the freedom they will find in a relationship with Christ.

We know in our own hearts that demons have no power to change the value of our food. The only effect Satan has is on our mind and heart, and the only power he has in our life is the power our belief gives him. But the person just coming out of that belief doesn’t know this yet. For him, the meal is still tangled up with the lie.

The way out of that lie is to know the real God, and that is exactly why Christ came. He lived as a human, right among us, eating what we eat, confined to the same body we live in, all to reveal one thing: who God truly is. Christ Himself said, “This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3). If we do not know the god we worship, we do not have life eternal. This is huge. And it tells us that today, two thousand years later, we can actually know the God revealed in the life Christ lived.

As we become more aware of this actual Person who is with us every day, right beside us where He has always been, we become more aware of who we actually are. His acknowledged presence in a life is uplifting and ennobling. We become more caring of others, more useful, more loving to those in our charge. We become servants, as Christ was a servant. This is our happy duty.

So when the child in the faith speaks up and tells us the food was offered to an idol, everything about the meal changes. The food is no longer something we are free to consume. The man is now our focus.

So we walk away from the food, sit down with the man, and tell him about the freedom he truly has in Christ, slowly and with wisdom, as he is able to take it in. His warning told us a great deal about him. He was seeking truth. He wanted to know if we understood it too. He was asking for our understanding. These are questions he is ready to hear the answers to; they have been asked.

The Lord has brought you your work for the evening.

Fall color on Grandfather Mountain from the Blue Ridge Parkway
1 Corinthians, Bible Studies, Spiritual Healing

Free to Choose

Dara Dietz

Reflections on 1 Corinthians 10:23

Fall color on Grandfather Mountain from the Blue Ridge Parkway

“All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not.” (1 Corinthians 10:23, KJV)

When I laid this verse out across my translations this morning, something unusual showed up. The translators split almost evenly between two readings. Some take it as being about what our choices do to us: not everything is good for us, not everything builds up our character. Others take it as being about what our choices do to others: not everything is good for others, not everything helps them grow stronger, not everything helps the building of the community.

So which is it? I believe Paul means both, and he deliberately moves us from one to the other. The word translated “expedient” means profitable or beneficial, and in the very next verse Paul says, “Let no man seek his own, but every man another’s wealth.” He ends the chapter with the same word turned outward: “not seeking mine own profit, but the profit of many” (10:33). What benefits me and what builds up others are not two separate questions. They meet in the heart.

A Time and a Place Under the SON

In God’s universe we have the freedom to do anything we want, but not everything is healthy or in harmony with God’s design. There is a time and a place for everything under the sun. This from Solomon, the wisest and most foolish man to live under the SON.

The intent of the heart is the key to the benefit or harm of our actions, upon ourselves and upon those in the sphere of our influence. Our intentions, coupled with the wisdom that comes from maturity in our relationship with the Lord, allow the mind of Christ to be in us. The actions that flow from a wise and loving heart and mind will always build up those affected by them. Evil actions are the evil of the heart flowing out in the works of the hands.

The same action, seen through a different understanding of the heart behind it, can prove to be either a curse or a huge and lasting blessing. And if this is true of our actions, it is even more true of God’s. How we read what God has done depends on whether we know His heart.

The Flood Through the Eyes of Love

The history of God’s dealings with this fallen world gives us an example. One action in particular has been used to put God’s character of Love in the worst light: the worldwide flood that destroyed every living thing on the planet, except for eight souls and the animals safely riding out the destruction in the ark.

How could this be anything other than God throwing up His hands, saying “I give up!” and in a hot temper killing off His entire creation? Or do the eyes of Love see our loving God holding on until the last possible moment, the moment when only one human heart on the entire planet was willing to work with Him? Only one human left for God to pour His healing, restorative truth into. He had to keep the door open for Christ to come, be born, and restore humanity to a healing relationship with God.

For 120 years the entire world was warned that it was destroying itself. Just like the nation of Israel later in history, they absolutely refused to hear, or were so sealed in their hearts against God that there was nothing more He could do. So He let them go. The God of Love withdrew His protection, and the results of all their choices came crashing down upon them. Whether they brought it on themselves, or God withdrew His hand from nature and allowed the waters above to come down upon the earth, the result was the same: the destruction of every breathing thing that had not entered the ark.

This was the only way forward for our loving God. The heart of Love could see no other way to save humanity from destroying itself, so in Love He changed everything. God had the same freedom each of us has, and in His freedom of choice He chose the only action that would preserve the opportunity for each soul on earth to choose for himself to live or die. He chose this knowing He would be misunderstood, knowing Satan would strut around gloating, “I told you He could not be trusted! I never said He was not powerful, but can we trust Him with all that power?”

Free to Choose, and to Live With It

So the story of humanity goes on. The ability to choose is still ours; the ability to become who we will be is still up to each one of us.

Yes, you have the right and the God-given ability to choose to do anything. You also have the right and the God-given ability to live with the results of all your choices. You cannot avoid the results, the truth of who you are and what you have chosen to do with your life. You can only delay the day you deal with yourself.

If you deal with yourself here and now, while there is still the opportunity to overcome and grow up into the truly great creation God made you to be, the rewards are truly fantastic: heaven here on earth, and a never-ending eternity to keep growing and discovering even more. Or you can choose to deny, to blame others for your sorry life, and to develop a heart and mind that would find an eternity of Truth and Love everywhere to be pure hell.

So yes, there is a time and a place for everything under the SON. Everything is good in its proper place when it comes from a heart intent on blessing itself and everyone in its sphere of influence. The good or bad of a thing is all in the timing and the intent of the doer of the deed.

Laws for the Immature Heart

Concrete laws are for the immature in heart and mind, those who cannot yet be trusted to do right regardless of the cost to themselves or what others will think of them. Paul calls the law our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ (Galatians 3:24), and tells Timothy that “the law is not made for a righteous man” (1 Timothy 1:9).

The mature do what is right because it is right. They have a real, deep relationship with their Creator, whom they have known by experience can be trusted. To break faith with God, with Christ, the One who gave you life and then restored that life to you again, is to break faith with yourself and with every creation in the vast universe. All of creation is pulling for each and every lost soul on this sick planet.

The Freedom Love Requires

In the things God has left to our freedom, our personal choices and what we choose to believe, He will not manipulate us, for to force the will would be to destroy the very person He created. You cannot force someone to love you. You can love them and create an environment that makes them as comfortable and happy as possible, but you cannot make them love you; that has to come from them. We are free to choose what we will.

When we stop believing that someone has our best interests at heart, as Adam and Eve stopped believing that God had theirs, the circle of Love and trust is broken, and the immediate result is fear and selfishness, the need to protect self. Adam’s first words after the fall were “I was afraid, and I hid myself” (Genesis 3:10).

The whole history of mankind is God showing us in every way possible that He can be trusted, that He is not the manipulating, vindictive God Satan has claimed He is. And in that freedom, nothing is evil except the intentions of the evil heart.

Dark storm clouds over the treetops
1 Corinthians, Bible Studies

The Lord Rebuke Thee

Dara Dietz

Reflections on 1 Corinthians 10:22

Dark storm clouds over the treetops

“Are we trying to arouse the Lord’s jealousy? Are we stronger than he?” Paul asks in 1 Corinthians 10:22 (NIV). He is still speaking to believers who thought they could eat at the Lord’s table and then sit down at the idol feasts as well. His question goes straight to the heart: do we really think we can handle the enemy on our own ground?

Jude gives us a scene that answers it. When Michael the archangel, whom I understand to be Christ himself, contended with the devil over the body of Moses, he did not argue. He did not debate Satan’s accusations. He simply said, “The Lord rebuke thee” (Jude 9), raised Moses up, and left the devil without another word. All the power in the universe, and he did not even mentally arm wrestle with the devil. He did not give Satan the satisfaction of an argument.

If Christ refused to contend with the devil, do we think it is our duty to spar with him?

Resisting is not sparring

James tells us, “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). But resisting the devil is not arguing with him. It is refusing to sit at his table, never putting ourselves on his ground, where we can easily come under his deceptions. Satan and his minions have no ability to distress or annoy us unless we sit down at their table and entertain ourselves there.

We are surrounded with all the support heaven has to offer: a full set of armor, the Holy Spirit as our constant guide, and our angels always with us. We alone can break faith with our Savior and wander into Satan’s dining room. Our only job is to choose which side we will join, and to accept the invitations that come to us each day to sit at the Lord’s table.

The wrath we do not want

Phillips renders Paul’s question, “Are we trying to arouse the wrath of the Lord?” Understood rightly, God’s wrath is letting us go, allowing us to experience the results of our own poor choices, just as Romans 1 says God “gave them up.” We do not want Christ to leave us to ourselves.

He is jealous for our loyalty, not out of pettiness, but because he knows that if we put our trust anywhere else, we will be destroyed. He is Love, drawing us to himself by his Love and Grace. If we resist him, we are left with no protection against the overwhelming deceptions of the king of fantasy land. Christ will lose us. The battle for our very existence is at stake.

No partial healing

The Remedy translation puts Paul’s second question in terms of healing: the Lord will not settle for a partial cure; he wants selfishness removed from the heart completely. Do we think we can heal ourselves, that we have a more powerful remedy than his?

Every time we choose to act in a better way, however small or inconsequential the choice seems, it has an effect on our minds. We are choosing to be healed, choosing to let Christ heal our hearts and minds. Once we make that choice, Christ through the Holy Spirit fills our lives with the power we need to stick with it. It all comes from him.

So let us protect our relationship with the Lord. Let us not entertain, even for a moment, the suggestions, thoughts or emotions that would draw us back to the old table. Fill the mind with uplifting thoughts, stay active, and build new habits. They will not feel as comfortable as the old ones at first. Stay with them, and we will discover this is who we truly are.

Oct 4, 2026 · @Dara Dietz

A woodland path beside a split-rail fence, with long shadows
1 Corinthians, Bible Studies

Two Tables: Whose Bread Are You Eating?

Dara Dietz

Reflections on 1 Corinthians 10:21

A woodland path beside a split-rail fence, with long shadows

“You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord’s table and the table of demons.” (NIV)

In Corinth, the question was literal. Meals were eaten in pagan temples, and the meat came from the altar. Paul tells the believers that sitting at a table means sharing fellowship with the one the table belongs to. You cannot eat at the Lord’s table and the idol’s table and remain undivided.

We may not face temple feasts, but the two tables are still set before us every day. The Remedy translation shows what is really at stake: we cannot internalize both the character of Christ and the character of demons. What we eat becomes who we are.

The choice must be made

You cannot choose both, and failing to make a conscious choice is itself a choice for the devil’s table. The Lord will not press Himself into your life or insert Himself where He is not asked. This is not because He does not care, but because no one can be healed without their permission and cooperation. Christ brings everything: the calling of your heart toward something better, the situations that make you face yourself, and the power to follow through. The one thing He cannot provide is your choice.

When Adam fell, God promised to put enmity between the serpent and humanity. That enmity works like a blanket of Grace around our world, a gentle tug on our minds and hearts upward to Christ. It is His invitation to His table. We are free to resist it, and every time we do, we build up muscles against the call to come and be healed.

Seated by small choices

We take our seat at Christ’s table through little things: each choice to bless someone at the expense of our own comfort, a simple kindness to a stranger, a helping hand when our time is rushed. These small choices are how we eat His bread and drink His cup.

In the same way, every missed opportunity Grace has made us aware of seats us at the other table: the person we passed on the other side of the road because we had important business. We go on unaware that we have just accepted bread and wine at the table of demons. Looking the other way gets easier, and the invitations to grow and become more lie unopened on the floor. Grace still draws, but we have trained ourselves not to feel it.

The other road is to answer the call: never passing a struggling soul without giving them something to brighten their day. And each time we give of ourselves, we find our cup refilled and our bread basket full. The Lord’s table is never lacking.

It is the heart that chooses

Outward kindness put on for show does not seat us at Christ’s table; it is still self-focused. The heart chooses the table. And when the heart of Christ is in us, we can see His presence flickering dimly in a wounded soul whose troubled life has left its marks. Let that person see you. Love them, value them as a child of God, and let the Spirit guide your time together. Trust comes first; then they will allow you to love them.

Two tables are set before us today. We cannot sit at both. Every small choice is a meal, and every meal is shaping who we are becoming. Which table will you choose?

Oct 3, 2026 · @Dara Dietz

Sunrise breaking over a dark wooded ridge
1 Corinthians, Bible Studies

Nothing, and Yet Not Nothing

Dara Dietz

Reflections on 1 Corinthians 10:19–20

Sunrise breaking over a dark wooded ridge

What say I then? that the idol is any thing, or that which is offered in sacrifice to idols is any thing? But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils. (1 Corinthians 10:19–20, KJV)

Paul asks a plain question this morning: is the idol anything? Is the food offered to it anything? The translations I laid side by side answer him with real force. Williams puts it, “Of course not!” Phillips says, “Not at all!” The Remedy says it best for me: the sacrifice is nothing, and the idol is nothing, “for neither have any power.”

No Power in an Idol

There is no healing or restorative power flowing through false idol worship. We are healed and restored by and through our connection with our Creator and Redeemer. Christ has the only answer, the only power to raise the heart, mind, and physical body of humanity above our current condition to a place of healing and restoration.

Made to Become Like Him

We were created to take our place in the universe, to mature, to grow up into the image of God Himself. He even endowed humanity with the power to create living creatures like ourselves, to give our life, to instil our very self, the whole of who we are, into the creation of another life. This gift is what Satan could never have, and his jealousy of it became his hatred of us. Adam “begat a son in his own likeness, after his image” (Genesis 5:3); the image of God passes on through us. This is truly an amazing gift for God to grant to a creation He knew would fail the test, fall into sin and need rescuing. Even so, He chose to go on with the creation of man. God is Love, and it is apparent in every form of life on this planet.

Man is the highest intelligence on planet earth; no other creature here has the reasoning, the heart and the mind of man. And another natural law of life is that we model whatever we take into our minds and hearts as our god. We become like the god we worship. Since this is reality, a proven truth, how can man receive anything good into himself from worshipping an object he has shaped with his own hands? It makes no sense. There is no life or power in a thing made by the hands of man.

Fantasy Is Not Harmless

You can degrade your mind by imagining an idol has something to offer, but that is just a fantasy, magical thinking. Living in a fantasy world, believing it to be true, does not make it so. All it will do is wear down your own mind and heart to the place where reality has no draw for you. The fantasy and the magical are all you will accept as your reality.

The mind that chooses to live unto itself in this way breaks completely with reality and is finally sealed, settled for eternity in a fantasy of its own making. Such a mind is lost to life as it really is.

The First Fantasist

Fantasy has a ruler. To worship idols is to join your heart and mind to the kingdom of magical thinking, ruled over by the king of liars, the first and greatest magical thinker of them all, Satan himself. He got it in his mind that he could be God, that he should be God, that Christ, who is God, was no different from himself. “I will be like the most High,” he said (Isaiah 14:14). He is still living in that delusion, and he passes it on to anyone who will listen. It was the very promise he made in Eden: “ye shall be as gods” (Genesis 3:5). He wanted to be a creator, and he was not and is not. He cannot give life; Jesus called him “a murderer from the beginning” and “the father of it,” of the lie (John 8:44). He can only counterfeit, and his fantasy land is the only creation he has to offer.

Picture someone on a beach, arms raised, crying, “I am God.” It is Eden’s lie all over again, and it is tragic, because the one who believes it is trading the true greatness God offers for a fantasy. We cannot do a thing to save ourselves; we will die just like everyone else, and nothing we declare on a beach will change that. The scene is ridiculous, but the person is someone Christ died for.

Not Nothing After All

And now Paul shows what stands behind that empty idol. It is not nothing after all. It is demons. Phillips calls them “evil spiritual powers.” The Remedy says the sacrifices of pagans are offered “with hearts in harmony with demons.” The idol has no power, but the worship still goes somewhere.

Once you refuse to offer your heart in worship and service to Christ, our God and Creator, the only other thing left to worship, no matter how you dress it up, is demons. Reality, truth, what actually is: this is a narrow way, with only one right answer. We are free to reject reality and truth, but once we reject what is real, every other option is a counterfeit, and the ruler of the counterfeit is the king of demons.

You are free to worship God and grow beyond your wildest dreams, or you can choose to live in the land of the lie, separate yourself from every ennobling truth, and worship the king of demons. There is no future with the devil. His only goal is to take as many with him as he can.

Unmasked at the Cross

He knows the truth about him is out. He was unmasked to the entire universe when he murdered Christ, his Creator. The only place in the universe where anyone will still listen to him is here on earth, and his delusions still have weight here with those who refuse to think for themselves.

You can see who lives in that land by its fruit. The selfish, me-first attitude is the attitude of those living in the lie and worshipping demons. The call to take the easy way, to self-protect, to be safe, is the call of our lower, unhealed natures.

The Mind of Christ

When we worship our God and Creator, we connect ourselves with the only source of life and power in the universe. We can have the mind and heart of Christ in us. “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5). Imagine it: we can be so connected to Him that our natural response is to love as He loves, to uplift and ennoble everyone we are in contact with. Everyone in our sphere of influence will feel the flow of Love coming down from Christ and flowing through us.

This is the mind of Christ. We are joined to Him when we worship Him by choosing to love others above ourselves.

A quick note: if you received several emails from me yesterday, I’m sorry for the flood, and no, I haven’t been hacked! I’m rewriting my herbal formula posts so they teach each formula in full, with the herbs, proportions and how to make them at home. The rest will be added quietly, and you can find them all in the new Herbal Formulas section of my Herbal Healing Index.

Oct 2, 2026 · @Dara Dietz

A stone path winding through mountain pines
1 Corinthians, Bible Studies

What God Are We Communing With?

Dara Dietz

Reflections on 1 Corinthians 10:18

A stone path winding through mountain pines

Behold Israel after the flesh: are not they which eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar? (1 Corinthians 10:18, KJV)

My mind went in an unexpected direction this morning. Paul is still working through the question of meat offered to idols, something most of us file away as an ancient problem that has nothing to do with us. We don’t buy our meat at a pagan temple. We don’t sit down to a meal in honor of a demon idol. We assume we don’t worship at those altars today. But we still do. And we are affected by the gods we worship.

Eating Was Fellowship

In Corinth, eating at the altar was never just a meal. To eat the sacrifice was to join yourself to the one it was offered to. Paul points to Israel’s own worship to make the point: those who ate the sacrifices were partakers of the altar. Several of the translations I compared this morning capture this beautifully. Goodspeed asks whether those who eat what is sacrificed do not have “divine fellowship” at the altar. Williams calls it “spiritual fellowship.” The Jerusalem Bible says they are “in communion with the altar.” Beck says simply that they “share the altar.”

Reading them side by side, the same thought kept coming to me in the margin: united to their God. United to the God they serve. The God they worship. The meal joined the worshipper to the one being worshipped.

The Remedy carries it one step further: “When we ingest Christ, we become like him and faithfully live out his principles in fulfilling all our duties.” There is a truth, a living truth, that you will model: you become like the God you worship.

This is not a new idea that Paul invented. It runs all through the Old Testament that Paul’s thinking is rooted in. Of the idols that have mouths but cannot speak and eyes but cannot see, the psalmist says, “They that make them are like unto them” (Psalm 115:8). Hosea says Israel’s abominations became “according as they loved” (Hosea 9:10). We take on the character of what we give ourselves to.

Our Altars Today

This truth has a different application to how we live today. You do not go to a temple to buy your meat or get a cooked meal, then enjoy the entertainments of that temple for the evening. Our altars are in our homes now. We don’t need to go out to the temple to worship. The temple is being fed live right into our living rooms, and the sacrifices are delivered right to our door.

Today we fill our bodies with cheap, unhealthy food, degrading the temple of the Lord, our mind and body. Then we turn on our mind-numbing media entertainment for the evening, turning off our reasoning and thinking, allowing all the junk food for the mind to enter unchallenged by our reasoning ability. The food we eat and the media we watch: this all becomes the society we live in.

We are eating and fellowshipping at our altars. The question is, what god are we communing with?

You Are What You Take In

Look honestly at your physical, emotional and spiritual food program. How much time do you spend filling your body and mind with the foods that build up your life, and how much with what degrades it?

You are physically what you eat; that is all you can be. There is no magic that turns worthless food into the nutrition your body needs to function and thrive. Eating a protein shake in the morning and cookies, candies and cheap carbs the rest of the day does not create health in the body, mind or spirit. The same is true of your emotional and spiritual life. You are what you take in. You become like the God you worship.

Every Choice Sets the Direction

You only have to choose today, and continue to choose, what you will consume, what you will take into your very heart and mind and allow to influence your eternal destiny. Each day, with every decision you make or fail to make, you are deciding who you are becoming. Each decision sets your life more firmly in the direction you are facing.

As the decisions go by, one after the next, you stop thinking about changing. The good you choose to do becomes your natural habit; it is who you are. The careless, foolish choices you once made no longer even interest you. Your mind is brighter, your body has a quicker step, your conversations are more intelligent. You are becoming more.

The other side takes hold just the same way. Each choice to put off the good you can do today adds up. You are tired and just want to veg out with a pizza and a good movie; it becomes your comfortable evening habit. You think, I should start that study, that walk, that project, but you choose to feed your brain and soul one more night of junk food first. That one more night turns into your life. There are no redo buttons on life.

And by then you no longer wish to change. You have lost all interest or taste in expanding your mind or ennobling yourself. All that Bible stuff seems so unappealing; there is no taste or inclination toward deep study. The mind has been starved to the point it has lost the ability for deep thought. The rule still applies: you become like the God you worship. No choice is a choice to not change anything.

This is what being settled into truth looks like, or settled away from it. There is no magic or lightning strike from God. You are just who you are. You have made every choice to be exactly who you are.

A Word on the Translations

Reading ahead into verses 19 through 21, it amazes me how some versions get this so right, while others change it just a little and lose the whole concept. The key word Paul uses through this passage is koinonia: fellowship, communion, sharing a common life. Some versions keep it. Others soften it to “associate themselves with,” or turn it into “sharing in the altar’s service,” something you do rather than someone you are joined to. Once that happens, Paul’s warning goes flat, and the question of meat offered to idols becomes a matter of manners instead of a matter of whom you are united with.

That too shows the choices and decisions of those doing the translating. It is hard to see beyond your own choices to think that there is something more, and an intellectual doing a translation can get stuck there as easily as anyone. Every rendering is a decision shaped by everything the translator has already taken in.

The same pull works on every one of us as readers. That is why I lay many translations side by side, not trusting any one voice, and keep asking the same question of every passage: what does this tell us about God? It guards against the translators’ bias, and against my own.

One Choice at a Time

All of life’s big moments begin with a small, insignificant choice, just a small moment in a day: the day you set your feet on the path to becoming who you would be. You are free to change your mind, make a turn, go a different way. The longer you have been set in your current pattern of life, the more effort it will take to make a lasting change. But it can be done, one choice at a time.

And the same law that pulls us down can lift us up. Paul writes later to this same church that “we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Choose the table you sit at. Choose the God you commune with. You will become like Him.

We are our choices.

Oct 1, 2026 · @Dara Dietz

1 Corinthians, Bible Studies

One Cup, One Loaf, One Body

Dara Dietz

Reflections on 1 Corinthians 10:16–17

Two symbols, one Christ

The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread. (1 Corinthians 10:16–17, KJV)

In one breath Paul gives us two symbols of Christ: the cup and the bread. Both point to him, yet they are not saying the same thing. The blood is his life poured out for us. The bread is his overcoming life given to us, and it is also the body we become when we eat it together.

The Remedy draws the line clearly. It calls the cup a symbolic ingestion of the life of Christ, and the bread a symbolic internalization of his character, methods and principles. Those two ideas carry this whole study.

The cup: Love poured out

Scripture tells us that “the life of the flesh is in the blood” (Leviticus 17:11). Blood poured out means a life given up. So the cup speaks first of Christ surrendering his life, and of the new covenant sealed in it (1 Corinthians 11:25).

Why did he pour it out? Love. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). God commends his love toward us in that Christ died for us while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8). The blood is his life, and Love is what moved him to pour it out. That is why I have always read the blood as the Love of Christ poured out freely for the benefit of fallen humanity.

When we drink the cup, we celebrate a staggering truth. Think of the God who created this entire universe, the vastness of all he is and all he has. Then look at our existence, no more lasting than a blade of grass that springs up for a moment, thrives a few hours in the sun, and gives way to the next. How could the God of eternity find this sinful, lost, hopelessly deluded little dot in the Milky Way worth his attention, much less his amazing Love?

Yet he knew our brokenness. He knew that many of this fallen race would choose eternal nonexistence over the Love-filled existence he offers. None of it discouraged his Love in the slightest. He remains constant, drawing us into his healing Love as quickly as our hearts can accept the truth about him. His Love was poured out so we could be made right and healed of our terminal, sin-sick condition.

The bread: the life that overcame

The bread is the body of Christ, and it points to the life he now has to give us. That is the life he lived and perfected in our humanity, carried all the way through Calvary.

This matters because the fix humanity needed was not complete until the cross. Adam broke faith with God when he believed a lie: that God did not have his best interest at heart. When you believe a lie about someone, your heart toward them changes, even if they are completely innocent. The circle of love and trust is broken. The serpent’s lie in Eden did exactly that, and Adam’s first response was fear and hiding (Genesis 3:10).

Christ came to heal that break. Every day he trusted his Father under pressure was part of building the remedy. At the cross he held onto that trust even while feeling forsaken, the very opposite of Adam’s choice. His earthly life was not wasted; it was unfinished until Calvary. We are reconciled by his death and saved by his life (Romans 5:10). And the bread is explicitly “broken for you” (1 Corinthians 11:24). It is the life that came through the cross.

Perfection is maturity

Hebrews says Christ was made “perfect through sufferings” (2:10) and, being made perfect, became the author of eternal salvation (5:8–9). The Greek word, teleios, means complete, mature, full-grown. Paul uses it for the mature as opposed to babes (1 Corinthians 2:6, 14:20).

For us, biblical perfection is maturity: knowing ourselves well enough to see a wrong turn, repent, and head the other way. Christ never took a wrong turn. His direction ran straight to the cross, and there he cried “It is finished” (John 19:30). That word, tetelestai, comes from the same root as teleios. His perfection and his finished mission are one idea: the work brought to its intended end.

So sharing in his body is sharing in his victory over the disease of sin. It is the only cure for our terminal sin condition, the only answer to our lost state of body, mind and spirit.

Communion means participation

The word Paul uses for “communion” is koinonia: sharing, fellowship, participation. The translations bring this out. NIV and Knox say “a participation in” the blood and body. NCV says “a sharing in.” Berkeley says “a fellowship in.” Goodspeed says that in drinking and eating “we share in” Christ. The Supper is not only remembering him; it is taking part in him.

That makes the Lord’s table all about community. It is a place and time to come together in our agreement to honor the faith we hold in what the Love of Christ secured for us. And it carries a responsibility: to keep showing this love to each other and to the larger society we affect.

When we love as Christ did, the cost of claiming another soul for him will never be beyond what we are willing to give of ourselves. That is our work: convincing a person, in the deepest part of their heart and mind, that this is truth and that this truth matters. This is not knowledge you can lightly handle. It will change the way you view your entire existence.

One loaf, many individuals

Verse 17 is Paul’s own application of the bread: because there is one loaf, we who are many are one body. The Remedy puts it this way: when we partake of Christ, we partake of the only genuine Bread that gives life, and so become united into one body, because we all assimilate the same character of Love.

Notice the order in verse 16. Paul names the cup first and the bread second, the reverse of the Supper itself. It seems deliberate, because it lets him move straight from the bread into the one body.

We who have accepted the gift of salvation all ingest the same life. But each of us, being an individual, will be affected differently. Christians are not cookie-cutter people, all thinking the same thoughts, doing the same things, wearing the same clothes. If you are part of a group that appears identical in every way, you are not looking at the body of Christ.

Christ encourages our individuality and our personal development into who we can be. Each one in the vast family of God will be a unique, one-of-a-kind person. Why? Because Christ will take you down paths where you will grow and become more. You will stretch your mind, spirit and physical body past all the limits of your past life. The truth of Christ is the truth of you as an individual, the truth that will expand you beyond the limits you have put on yourself.

So yes, eat!

So yes! Partake of the one loaf. It carries all the power flowing from the throne of the universe, the Fires of Truth and Love, the nutrients from the fruit of the tree of life. His body flows with every nutrient for our physical, emotional and spiritual being. So eat up; each day eat your fill. This is the food that truly nourishes and heals.

The healing for humanity was accomplished at Calvary. Christ overcame every last selfish, me-first tendency when he surrendered his life to his own created beings. He demonstrated as no other intelligence could that God is Love. He had created humanity free, able to choose what they would be. At the cross he overcame, healed humanity, and showed us who our God truly is, all at the same time.

Every question was answered there. Satan’s lies about God no longer hold any credibility; he was proven a liar, and Christ showed who God truly is. The universe has its answers. Only here do the questions remain, and only here are intelligent beings still deluded.

Through the valley

To take in that life, we must die to the old one: the selfish, self-serving habits and protections we learned over a lifetime of sinful living. This is the valley of the shadow of death, where Christ leads us down the path he had to walk alone. It is where you let go of all that is false and grab hold of the true with both hands.

It will take both hands to hold onto Christ as he draws us through the valley and up the steep, rugged path. At the peaks the view is beautiful, the air is pure, and we can see forever. Let it all go. Discover the true joy of reaching beyond the wildest dreams you ever had. You are more, and it is truly you, because you have surrendered the lies and are living the life of Christ within you.

The reward is worth any and every sacrifice.

Sep 30, 2026 · @Dara Dietz