Written by our Lay Leader, Doug
The ability to reason has enabled the human species to develop the sciences, medicine, and technology as tools to further our species’ existence and reign on earth. We have long recognized the value of our mind to help us meet our needs and improve our quality of living—to the point that it has become an idol. For centuries, we have worshipped and overextended our reliance on our rationality.
Have you ever thought that perhaps the reason for your desire to hang on to rationality as your only guide in living is that it puts you in charge, that it keeps you king of your life? We trust our ability to reason and support our decisions with facts and rational arguments. However, studies have shown that we make decisions that grant us our desires and our vision of who we want to be and then construct the rationale to support those decisions. This approach makes us feel good about ourselves, that we are taking the same actions that any rational person would take. We tell a story that we really believe, but it is a false story. And we don’t like it when someone starts picking apart our rationale, pointing out inconsistencies and contradictions, so we run away from people like that in order to preserve our view and way of living life.
People create false stories to protect themselves, to protect their ego. We are very fragile creatures and so we manufacture strong frameworks and protective walls that allow us to function in the way we want to be. We hold fast to our beliefs and views in the face of contrary viewpoints, because if we accept a different way of looking at the world, we would have to deconstruct the fortress we have built and be vulnerable. Like Adam encountering God in the garden after eating from the tree of knowledge, we would feel naked and afraid, and so we would have to hide. So we continue to maintain this false self, this mask that we hide behind, that we have manufactured for our own sake.
Our unwillingness to acknowledge or rely on our spiritual senses—to accept that we have a spirit that is unseen and eternal—keeps us from knowing our spiritual self; we aren’t familiar with the nature of our spirit. We don’t feel we have control over our spirit. We are afraid that awakening of our spiritual self would create a competitor for our rational self.
But once we have accepted the reality that we are spirit as much as we are body, the awakening of that spirit within us enables us to see that we have been living with only half of our faculties engaged, and that we are more than we ever thought we could be. We begin to see new truths about ourselves, truths that change our way of viewing the world and other people, truths that dramatically affect our thinking, behavior and actions. Yes, it makes us feel vulnerable, but we gain a comfort about being vulnerable. We find that our vulnerability draws us closer to Christ, who lived out his life in complete vulnerability, to the point of giving up his life.
When we surrender ourselves to Christ, we discover a new life. When we begin to put down our ego, our protective framework, our false self, and begin to trust in our spiritual senses—which seems so radical an act at first—a new way of living emerges. We confess all the things that we have done (and will probably continue to do) to rebel against the One who is Sovereign. We begin to seek and to live out the purpose for which God created us. We begin to accept the unseen, the unknown, and the eternal and recognize the false promises of the seen, the known, and the mortal. And we find a fullness in living that we have never known before.
In newness of life,
Doug