When a man or men choose the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil rather than The Tree of Life, IE chooses the mind of men rather than the mind of God, The Father of Jesus Christ, Secularism, Paganism and all the other isms, bad things happen. This is in your personal life or collectively on a large scale as a nation. This is what the beginning of the bible is trying to explain. It’s an ancient pattern, an ancient story of reality. It is just this way.
Darwinism is just one of the many ideas that unfolded in the 17th, 18th and 19th Century and that kind of view directly affected the destruction unleashed in the Big War. Below is the best description I have read of the result. It mirrors the destruction of mankind mentioned in Genesis. Epstein and all of the powerful people surrounding him are a different kind of the same example on the extreme end of things, but its the same pattern.
Scaling this down into my own life again I see the same pattern in my personal history in things I do, have done and things done to me.
I believe our culture is very much along the way of some sort of big collapse, there are just too many categories of the wrong set of choices. A ‘New Age’ is and has been trying to grow up, it won’t be good.
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The Great War (WWI) wiped out 7000 men per day for 220 weeks. When the ashes and artillery barrels cooled, the world had irreversibly changed.
The six century-old Turkic-Islamic Ottoman Empire collapsed, and a reconfigured Middle East emerged under French and British control. Hope for a Jewish homeland gained steam. The mighty Habsburg Dynasty with its centuries of influence over central Europe was swept away. The Russian Empire, eviscerated before the War, buckled as Lenin animated Karl Marx’s theories of scientific materialism and the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Inside Germany a red revolution erupted and the monarchy abdicated.
Historical dominoes fell, and collective political movements rose in response. Benito Mussolini introduced Fascism to Italy: “Outside of our principles there is no salvation for individuals and far less for nations.” Soviet Russia promised a better world through revolution: “Without revolutionary measures there can be no salvation.” The National Socialist German Worker’s Party, commonly referred to as the Nazis, soon emerged with their radical worldview: “May Reason be our leader, Will our might.”
Teichrib, Carl. Game of Gods: The Temple of Man in the Age of Re-Enchantment . Whitemud House Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Check this out, might be interesting to let this influence our Freedom conversations at least within ourselves in relation to the Garden. Are we brave enough to take this kind of thinking outside of ourselves ?
God moved immediately to protect humankind from being in a state of eternal isolation, experiencing pain for a very long time. To protect Adam and Eve from eternal pain, he drove them out of eternity, guarded eternity with a cherubim, and sent them to a new place called redemptive time, where we live now. Here God could fix the problem; he could undo the effects of the fall. He could redeem his creation, and then bring humankind back into eternity after it was again holy and blameless.
As you know, the next few chapters after the fall, scripture points out all the evils that came to man and we see this as the sin that was brought into the world but yet this guys is saying something very different. Outside of the Garden was the place where a different kind of time took place. Adam and Eve were strategically placed in a better, safer place than the perfect place of the Garden for redemption, wholeness to occur. Well to me that is so bizarre, I am having a hard time seeing love in that but yet… I trust it, it resonates with our circumstances and gives the only possible answer to why me Lord ??? Why my daughter, my wife ??????????????????????????????????
Think of what is being demanded of Leisha and I being stuck in the process (time) its taking to restore Claire. I just held Leisha for the umpteenth time this morning as she wetted my shirt due to her ubber empathic mothering heart taking over and she was being crushed by what she knows and what she sees her daughter has to go through. The re-occuring theme around here is Claire is going through things like Leisha did in her early woman years with Severe Rheumatoid Arthritis. At least 6 times in the last week Leisha has fallen into my arms and I mean ‘Fall Hard’ sobbing and saying over and over I don’t want my daughter to go through what I went through but yet…. This answers Claire’s question to me or really more a statement: Daddy, this is to me like moms Rheumatoid Arthritis, this might not go away, right ? Yes Claire, I don’t understand it but yes that is a possibility.
Think of your most difficult struggles !!!
Look at Jesus’s answer to John the Baptist in prison about to get his head cut off, there was something better in leaving John in his demise than taking him out of that very evil and dark situation. God does see ‘Troubles’ so differently than we do. He is a Father too and he has more Love for my daughter than my painful love but he leaves us, her, you there in these crushing places without really giving us clear ‘Reasons Why?’ But yet here is the answer. Redemptive, linear, chronological time where burning fires test (pull out impurities). Leaves us in places where after sometime we will begin to ask the most important questions we could ever ask about everything. Then often is silent through the lack of change or healing to get us to a place to force us into a position of the heart to ask with a little more seriousness. Then might even do that again… And maybe several more times within the linear time of … years.
I believe this God of the Bible plays with time and pain much differently than we really want to accept.
My point ? If we will take our eyes off of what traditional theology tells us and see what the Genesis story might be saying, see it differently, we might see the abundant life is by design a place where severe troubles WILL exist. That By Design the Freedom Journey is about you becoming who God called you to be within the midst of your circumstances, its somehow living free inside of the prison cell even if the bars have been removed like Paul and Silas did. It’s often finding yourself in the Garden of Gethsemane crying out in-spite of all of your manliness and your ubber self sufficiency… Father will you take this cup from me isn’t there another way ???????????? And all you get back is this is my son in whom I am well pleased.
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REDEMPTIVE TIME
The first couple existed in eternity with God in the Garden of Eden. There was no such thing as evil, or at least Adam and Eve did not know what evil was. Things were all good.
The Bible tells us that God “made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food.”But in the middle of the garden were two significant trees: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God told Adam he was free to eat from any tree in the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
But Adam and Eve did not listen. They ate fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and something terrible happened. For the first time, things were no longer “all good.” Humankind “knew” both good and evil. The Hebrew word for know here is the same word that Scripture uses when it says that Adam “knew” Eve in the sexual sense (Gen. 4:1 KJV). It refers to the total experience of knowing. This experience of knowing evil—and therefore pain—is what God had tried to protect people from. He knew that it would hurt.
Nevertheless, Eve was deceived by Satan. Satan held out the apple of omniscience and wisdom (Gen. 3:6), and the first couple received evil and pain.
Imagine, for a moment, the situation. God had created a perfect place with perfect creatures to live in eternity. And, suddenly, evil arrived on the scene. What did God do?
God said, “‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.’ So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life” (Gen. 3:23–24).
God moved immediately to protect humankind from being in a state of eternal isolation, experiencing pain for a very long time. To protect Adam and Eve from eternal pain, he drove them out of eternity, guarded eternity with a cherubim, and sent them to a new place called redemptive time, where we live now. Here God could fix the problem; he could undo the effects of the fall. He could redeem his creation, and then bring humankind back into eternity after it was again holy and blameless.
What an awesome plan! He even gives a clue in Genesis 3:15 about how he would accomplish this: The woman’s offspring would eventually crush the serpent’s head, a promise fulfilled in Christ’s victory over Satan. No wonder the writer of Hebrews calls it “so great a salvation.” God not only kept us from eating from the tree that would have thrust us into eternal pain, he drove us into a place where he would have the time to fix us and bring us back into relationship with him!
Philosophers and physicists have for centuries debated the nature of time, but for our purpose, let’s define redemptive time as “an incubator that exists for the purpose of redemption.” It is a place where God can lovingly fix what is wrong. It is a place where evil temporarily exists while God does his work.
Think of it another way. God has a sick creation. He needs to do surgery. Thus, he places us in the operating room of redemptive time. Into our veins he pumps the life-giving blood of grace and truth. During surgery, he excises evil and brings the renewed patient back into eternity in a holy state. We don’t know how long this surgery will last. We only know that we are expected to participate actively in our own surgery, and we don’t get any anesthesia for the procedure. That’s why growing up into the image of God often hurts so much.
Redemptive time, an essential ingredient to growth, will not last forever. Paul says that we need to make the best possible use of time, for we don’t have much: “Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise, but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil” (Eph. 5:15–16). Scripture tells us that God will at some point put an end to this redemptive time and usher in the return of eternity. [1]
One of the most difficult areas of life to wrestle with in regards to Process VS Destination at least in my life has been forgiveness. From what I have experienced from other people in life and what I have personally dished out (See the topic Anger here on this blog) its just tough. In discipling others, CARE situations, Freedom Walks and Freedom Conversations I see this. I see it over and over in our Foregivness/Shame sessions at my church’s Freedom Gatherings. The deep struggle often going on for years is written all over the place in peoples faces. It’s just Massivly diffiicult and “saying it shouldn’t be” doesn’t seem to change things, maybe it actually shouldn’t be easy. Taking far far longer to get over ourselves and others than we can ever expect or even want to. Often thinking we have arrived not only to have a new event causing triggers on the old. Always more places to go…seemingly a never ending process.
Process maybe our best go-to idea for talking ourselves and others into a mindset or perspective of Grace. Often on the bigger matters trying to get various ideas of grace living inside of you, seeing process as a part of it might be the only thing to get you there on both sides of forgiveness.
At my churches Freedom Gatherings when these two sessions, Forgiveness and Shame/Guilt come around and I think they are very connected, the whole atmosphere of the entire event changes. I guess I have experienced that 11 events so far ? I can’t think of one where this didn’t happen. Sometimes deep sobs break out.
One aspect of that shift seems to be, ok these folks who put this together are not only getting serious now, this goes deep is a massive ask, the mean business. Everyone on the volunteer side of the events senses a change to some form of somberness. I dare say our session on Forgiveness is one of the best around primarily because the speaker tells her story about her experience in it… and I tear up typing this because it is one of the ultimate expressions not only of transparency but vulnerability and most importantly a profound example of extreme health and wholeness as a result. It always makes me love my church more. My story is so different but I always see my story in hers, the experience heals me more but yet at the same time shakes me deep into my bones every time. You cannot help but think to yourself this is VERY good news.
Forgiveness is a weighty matter just like the song below.
In the long run you can’t fake it without possibly some form of physical death as the end result. I have a good friend who ended up in the hospital over the lack there of.
The cause behind the need to forgive seems to maybe always be a direct attack on your identity. Same for what you did and do to others.
It seems to be one of the biggest gifts you can give to others to forgive and ask for the same. Especially a raw un-adulterated Asking. A no strings attached, Katy bar the door, my head is bent down to be chopped of by you if you so desire placement of my soul before yours, asking of forgiveness. In other words help them or help yourself get a little further down the road in the process of living a free life without a present need for forgiveness.
Having said that I find it way too often it’s only you participating in the process. That not only seems to be universal its something you have to deal with straight on. What else are you going to do ???
As I said previously but its very worth stating again, It seems to always find its way to be way more difficult than it should be.
There seems to be in all of us a need for forgiveness to hide itself behind all sorts of justifications and human emotions. Too often ideas and human innards that are seemingly out of ones control.
In other words if you have a destination mindset first and foremost all aspects of Forgiveness will more often than not fool you into a place of not being able to trust just about anything, God, His Word, His people… life. Why? If destination is our goal we will leave things short. Our desire as humans to put things behind us just so we don’t have to deal will be the call of the day and will trump the place God really desires for us.
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not just seven times, but seventy-seven times!
In the Bible, the number “7” symbolizes completeness or a finished work, while the number “70” signifies ‘perfect spiritual order carried out with all spiritual power and significance. Therefore, 490, being the product of 70 x 7, signifies spiritual perfection of perfect order and completeness. (Bullinger, 1921, p.235)
That is a good picture of the target but it’s viewing yourselves and others ‘In Process’ that seems to me to be the synthetic engine oil (the best kind there is and it cost $$$$$) that gets you there. This post is not about all the steps, ideas, ways of forgiving etc. plenty has been written about that. It’s about adding in this layer of truly seeing oneself and others in process when dealing with it. Personally I also think 7 X 70 represents sometimes you must forgive way more times than you can ever imagine which is in and of itself, process.
I know this well, as an example, with what I did to my Leisha I tell her all the time some form of this… I don’t think I will ever get completely over what I did to you and I now don’t mind that. I keep finding new veins of how I injured your soul. Sometimes she does things to me and way to often I have to honestly admit I can see that stems from how I was to you. Thankfully sometimes I see that before she brings it up to me and when I do my response is. ok, Please, Please, Please, Forgive me. I am so in Love with you! That kind of always in process, always striving to be a more easily contrite person helps me to love me more… always.
In conclusion at least for now. Seriously, ask yourself this, how do we measure ourselves to others on how good we are at forgiving? Humans are so complex and they can so easily misrepresent themselves. Maybe, me measuring myself against you is really me measuring myself against a hard hearted blah blah blah. Maybe in all your expressions of being all Christian and stuff you are just a really good actor. How good can I measure now how good I might be able to get at this? I submit there is no end because there is always this element of process.
We are all in process, saint and sinner alike and in-fact everything is in process. That is a reality we cannot change, but we can choose or manage our perspectives.
There is the idea of destination or the plural form of that, destinations and that is a fact of life but destination is just a milestone within the bigger thing going on of process. When we arrive there is more to go, virtually almost always!
The other day Leisha overheard our neighbor comment on our dead Bald Cypress, basically it just needed to go since it was showing no life. We had two of these in our front yard in Fort Worth and we have this one in this house because both Leisha and I just loved those two. So near 22 years and yes every year they turn orange, shed all of their leaves and yes cover large portions of our yard in orange. We happen to like it, Leisha loves it, both of us giggle with glee at the knees that show up in our yard. We see the knees as unique and unusual attributes of this kind of tree. We tend to like things and people that are different. We see it as a process or in process, it’s just another phase of its life. Our neighbors daughter only saw death. I guess she thought it was an evergreen.
We are a little west of its natural range but only by a couple of hundred miles or so and they seem to thrive under our care. These things can get HUGE, 140 feet !!! They can live a long time, some have been found to be near 500 years old and forest of them in the US 1400 hundred years old. I don’t expect ours to get that big our live that long but it will get as big as we want and outlive us. Also, these big boys are a great way to add fall color in North Texas. Just look at those vibrant orange colors all over the place !!!
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Philipians 4:8
Did you catch that? A different perspective can change everything about something or someone’s value and its actual place in its/their own process… Isn’t perspective within our own control and isn’t there an inherent sense of responsibility ?
We are like that with ourselves and others in de-valuing ‘us’. We see death or lack of worth where there might be life and value. At worse we can see an end of things where its just another season, maybe one of many more to come. But the Ancient One doesn’t see things this way and most especially us. He sees process and value and he sees what comes after this season no matter how difficult it may be. After all he has been watching us, planning on things for us, waiting on us to get over ourselves for a long long time. I don’t think he really likes having to let us have ‘troubles’ to help us get to where we need to be but what can a Father do?
Father thank you for this long difficult season that helped me so much in understanding more about this. Thank you for loving me through my own often self imposed difficulties. Most especially where I made things worse because I demanded things to be over, had an attitude because I knew things shouldn’t have taken so long. I doubted you, your ways, your infinite wisdom. Thank you for gingerly getting me into this new way of seeing myself and others. I see Love in you having been there and more and more I trust you will always be. Thank you for ‘The Process’
I have been involved in some conversations about the idea of Freedom From lately and in saying it that way its probably mostly a conversation in my own head.
Of course we all want to be Free, an obvious example of that is Richie Havens performing the song ‘Freedom’ at Woodstock. I could disert… (Make a dissertation) on the topic of the built in desire for Freedom but that is another Blog but I bring Havens into this story just as a short pointer to this point that the search for Freedom is ubiquitous across humanity
This post is part of a longer internal discussion I have been having for 6 years on what is Freedom. I have tried on for size sooo many definitions but I keep coming back to this one:
Freedom is you being who God called you to be in the midst of your circumstances.
So if that definition has any reality to it, and I believe it does, it seems to me you would have to conclude ok, then human Freedom has a component that “Freedom From” things is not the main goal. There are countless discussions one could have that are interesting rabbit trails from that point but the real purpose of this post is to relay a story I heard this week.
John is a Pastor who is a great great friend of mine and has this very interesting back story of Heidi Baker type mission field experiences. As we just chill together we always end up in long discussions about the things of God and he ends up telling me more and more of these stories. They are way beyond anything I have seen in my 60 trips around the sun and I get to hear them from a man whom I have immense trust in his approach to this Jesus Seeking life. did I mention he was also a friend ?? Maybe one of my best and that happened in a very short period of time, its mysterious and divine… mountains of trust.
So John ended up in Indonesia in one of the main communities that were destroyed by that large Tsunami and earthquake. Remember that ??? The village had 70,000 souls in it… The wave hit, the earth quaked and 1400 people survived. He was there right after that happened and the sites and scenes of how that looked post wave were just shocking to him. There were a lot of obstacles in just being a caring Christian person in all of that devastation in the midst of a Muslim country that wants zero part of Christianity within its culture…
So he did what he could and moved on from that into other places God was leading him into. Sometime later in life back in the states he was at a restaurant and the waiter had a name tag that said his name but also told him where he was from and it said Indonesia. Of course being a normal human John reached out for a connection and told the waiter “I’ve been there !” John told a part of the tsunami story and mentioned the Village. The waiter then told John a story about that Village he was never told in the midst of the chaos.
You see there was a singular Christian Church in this village of 70 thousand people. A day or two before the wave hit the Muslim leadership decided they had enough of this church and they needed to step up the pressure to force the church to something different, either convert or leave so they burned the Church down. The muslim towns people were acting out on their own version of what Freedom and Freedom From meant to them, we all do that!!!
The church looked inside of themselves for a response to the same question and that ended up being to just pray, either the pastor of the Church or some member said lets go up on the hill to pray, they did and the wave hit. They were part of the 1400 of 70, 000 who survived…
I am going to end the story there to let you cogitate and conclude for yourself what you feel is the various meanings behind this story in regards to ‘Freedom From’… Obviously God Cares about his people, it does prove out or validate certain versus but what does this have to do with Freedom and Freedom From ???? I can’t shake what I think about it so I wrote this, Peace !!!! 🙂
Sometimes you sit in a sermon and it makes life appear so easy, just turn your face to Jesus. And it really is that easy almost.
This weekend marks 6 years of going to church and in those 6 years Leisha and I have pushed so hard for personal transformation as individuals, as a couple, as a family. We have experienced so much, I know a little bit about that life style now, metanoia. I just don’t think you get to where you need to be without facing your Old Ghost. In fact Leisha is in the throws of discovering and facing some Old Ghost who have hidden themselves so well she only has an inkling they are really there… Sometimes it’s so painful for her and you have to know surely painful for me to watch from a near, from a far. I am trying to be as good to her through this as she has been to me, its difficult, she set the bar high.
I am convinced it takes both facings, Jesus and Old Ghost, one lifts up, takes you to a place you should be, the other takes you down to a place you need to go. If you don’t go there you probably won’t be able to hear or see where Jesus was and especially what he wants to talk about … about those Old Ghost.
Old Ghost
Haunt these halls and cross my lonely thoughts
Show up in the funny way I talk
Speak to me in records that I bought
Screamin at me for all the things I lost
Old Ghost
Lingerin by my old stompin grounds
They built them all and tore the old house down
I can’t go back and I can’t go around
The devils that live on that side of town
I believe in things that I can’t see
In my blood and in my bones
These old Ghost they all belong to me
They hurt me and they heal me
They hide and they reveal me
Remind me what I will be when I’m gone
Old Ghost
Sometimes in the Dark they hold me close
Whisper things I wish I didn’t know
About my self and every heart I’ve
I believe in things I can’t see
In my blood and in my bones
These old Ghost they all belong to me
They hurt me and they heal me
They hide and they reveal me
Remind me what I will be when I’m gone
This is the written account of Adam’s family line. When God created mankind, he made them in the likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them. And he named them “Mankind” when they were created.
When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth. After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters Now if you will turn to Genesis 1:26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness.” In my family on the Darling side there are 17 Grand Children, I am the oldest and for quite some time the Grand Children have been having children. My wife and I have one child. I have heard it for a couple of decades, when a new child is born we look for big jowls [show mine] and when we see them we all get giddy with glee, that baby is one of us !!!!! Don’t all of us do that ??? What would happen at the family introduction if your child had Teletubby’s like ears for the first time. Everyone would be speaking softly, behind backs about that but what if for generations everyone had Teletubby like ears and protrusions from their heads and your new baby had them too. There would be celebration about that, THE DARLINGS LIVE ON !!! IT WORKED YET AGAIN !!!… EVEN PAGANS WOULD CELEBRATE THIS TO THE GODS OF FERTILITY !!! THANK THE GODS WE ARE LOOKED UPON WITH FAVOR BY THEM,
My wife nicknamed my daughter Ronda because she is in so many ways like her daddy… Ron. Recently Ronda and I took a small trip together and after a few days sent mom a picture of us having a good time. It was a picture of the kitchen cabinets in the place we were renting… most of the doors left open. We didn’t set that up, we just noticed it and all 3 of us just laughed and laughed. That and countless other natural things drive momma NUTTS at home, sometimes Ronda and I like to emphasis things to relish in this imaging thing and of course make momma a little uncomfortable 🙂 But know for sure there is lots of Leisha in Ronda too. Like momma’s naturally sweet nature. I love that about my offspring. I have become sweeter but the natural sweetness my daughter has comes from her mother.
This is Identity Language, Fathering Language, Parenting Language. It’s all over the bible and the more you learn to see it the more you will see it. We do have things in us that came from our “Spiritual Father”. God is trying to communicate to man here and to you and me specifically, he is our father, we naturally get things from him just like our children getting things from us. We are being invited into a certain perspective of a relationship with the Creator… as a Father where we also have things already in us like our father. Father is used all over the bible and that kind of perspective, that kind of thinking is a huge part of our rightful inheritance as a child and its hugely important to know that, work that out in our minds eye until we begin to approach the creator from the universe from that angle. If you study religions and world views in the world God as a Father is fairly unique and it is absolutely part of the world view that comes to us from the long legacy of Christianity.
From the book: The Work Of The Holy Spirit
Abraham Kupyer D.D. LL.D
First Printed in 1900
CIX. – Implanted Dispositions.
“Perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord.”–2 Cor. vii. 1.
To deny that the Holy Spirit creates new dispositions in the will is equivalent to a return to Romish error; even tho Rome argues the matter in a different way.
Rome (the Pagan Culture) denies the total corruption of the will by sin; that its disposition is wholly evil. Hence, the will of the sinner not being wholly useless, it follows: (1) that the regenerate does not need the implanting of a new disposition; (2) that in this respect there is no difference between the regenerate and the unregenerate. They who introduce into the Reformed churches this and similar teachings ought to consider that they impair one of the foundations of the Reformation, and, however unintentionally, lead us back to Rome.
The principal question in this controversy is: whether man is something or nothing.
If man is absolutely nothing, as some fondly proclaim; then God can not work in him; for He can not work in nothing. In nothing one can make nothing. In nothing nothing can be implanted. To nothing nothing can cleave. Nothing can not be a channel for anything. If man is nothing, there can be neither sin nor justification, for the sin of nothing is nothing; and nothing is no sin. Nothing can not be born again, or be converted, or share the glory of the children of God. And if there is no sin, there is no need of a Savior to atone for sin; for to atone for nothing is no atonement. Then there is no need of discussing sanctification at all. This shows that the idea that man is nothing can not be taken in the absolute sense. Since man is a being, he must be something; and they who maintain that he is nothing show by their actions that they consider themselves far from nothing.
But if we put it, “Man is nothing before God,” it becomes at once intelligible. Then every good Christian subscribes to it unconditionally; he mourns only that it is so hard to become nothing before God; and with all the saints he prays that he may more sincerely deny himself, die to himself, and know himself as nothing before God. Measured by God, man has no value. All his endeavor to be something before God is ridiculous folly. Every pulpit ought to cast down, as with trumpet-tones, every mountain of pride, and humble man before God, so that, feeling himself a mere drop in the bucket–yea, less than nothing–he may find rest in the adoration of the divine Majesty.
Before God man is not anything, not even the regenerate man; but in His hand, by His ordinance, and in His estimation, he is so great that “God crowns him with glory and honor,” loves him as His child, makes him an heir of the heavenly bliss, and invites him to spend eternity with Him.
These two may never be confounded; man’s absolute nothingness before God may never be applied to man as an instrument in God’s hand. And man’s mighty significance as God’s instrument may never tend to make him the merest something before God as a being.
This week I learned of a situation where a person struggles with feeling are they really “a part of”. It shocked me, I don’t want to go into details of their life, but I do to. In the most peculiar ways, when every covert message and overt message says I actually am, I still feel it and sometimes feel it in ways that make me just go someplace else … in an unhealthy way. Aka Run, or just not go there, go-to the other side of the room, stay home, comfort myself. There was nothing at all, zero, nada in this persons life that would have told me this about them other than that person becoming vulnerable. Really it shocked me and at the same time it made me feel a new kind of love for them.
That’s how filters work from our own brokenness, they nudge us to act differently than we would have otherwise. We often come by them honestly and sometimes the causes start at infancy or very early childhood so they are reinforced over a life. Do I hear steal and kill here?? Do I hear a “Lie” ?? Do I hear stronghold ??
A few years ago I tried to capture this feeling, this self awareness in a song, this is it. What came out is a sort of quirkiness. It reflects a start and start to life, other odd sounds and odd beats that come into play in this kind of life. I was surprised how difficult it was to find the same deep melancholy I experience in real life, it just would just not come out in song. I picture Holy Spirit at work here, in the pursuit of creativity myself revealed something about myself. As if in one part of my mental landscape I could sense deep sadness but in another part I could sense a sort of dancing type freedom, in other words I am dualistic in this problem, I carry both sides of the coin inside of me. Me thinks one part of the answer is to focus on the funner part while I work through the not so fun part but sadly, if you don’t experience this you have no idea how hard that can be, especially when other kinds of brokenness finds friends in misery between the brain people inside of me in the conversations of internal life.
It is good to be a part of and its also good to not be because a true journey into the underlying causes of all of that changes you in good ways. The world needs humans that have been through this, that can tell about their experience, that can tell “How they Survive”. It needs people that can be sensitive to other people struggling with this. Some of us are blessed and cursed at the same time but God Redeems all kinds of human conditions. The world needs independent thinkers that understand the importance of being a part of in healthy ways but not fully immersed in the group think that can go on when you give in too much too being a part of. There is also problems in being too much a part of so that can be equally bad, at least at this stage I believe that. Carefully choose your poison !!!
When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth. After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters
sometimes feel it in ways that make me just go someplace else … in an unhealthy way. Aka Run, or just not go there, go-to the other side of the room, stay home, comfort myself. There was nothing at all, zero, nada in this persons life that would have told me this about them other than that person becoming vulnerable. Really it shocked me and at the same time it made me feel a new kind of love for them.