...And Neither Are You...
I'm not much one for politics, but human studies is an interest of mine that can sometimes intermingle with such. Have you ever heard it said or perhaps experienced this notion that the more West you travel the more "open minded" people become? What's up with that? Well, I've come across A LOT of "open mindedness" since I moved more West. And some might say it is my "mid-west influence" but I do not necessarily see the positiveness that is to come about with being "open minded".
The mindset is like "anything that feels or looks good can stick." As if our souls are just a refrigerator door waiting for another, truthfully meaningless, magnet that represents a company we'll never honestly invest in. Just slap it right on! All is good!
Are our souls (the essence of who we really are) really just so meaningless that it can be so easily manipulated?
Then we come face to face with this open-mindedness thing and before you know a philosophy on "being your own god/goddess" invades your emptiness.
This is what I call: the good, the bad, the ugly.
"Well, Samantha there is nothing wrong with thinking such positiveness and holiness about ourselves. There is a god in all of us. We all have our own divine light. Unique and brilliant. We have the power and potential energy to change the world! It's all about the mind!....." And on and on and on....
Now, excuse my "mid-west" thinking but if you are someone who believes in this we need to address come issues....because although those statements have some truth, it is not the complete truth....and do you remember what we call "half truths?"
Please grab a Bible or go to biblegateway.com and read with me Matthew 15: 1-20. Then go ahead and highlight verses 8-9
“‘These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
9 but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain;
their teachings are merely human rules.’”
Who is Jesus talking to?
Religious people.
"Oh he/she is very religious." :P
What is religion? Man's attempt to make things right with God.
This philosophy (love of wisdom) and open-mindedness to be a Divine has been distorted. How? Why? All the same, religion goes down the drain: it is about man's attempt
Merely human that's all these teachings are. If you want to be great, why not seek the One who is great? Jesus.
"Oh no no no. You mentioned Jesus. What's so special about Jesus other than what "mere humans" tell you Samantha?! Jesus was human too you know."
Let's go back to the beginning shall we: Genesis 1
And then let's pause shall we on verse 1.
Yes, the very first verse of scripture that gives so much strive other than John 14:6.
Like I explained to the nine year old boy I nanny for, "Are you what you create?...No, you are not. For example, you created/made that paper airplane but are you that paper airplane? Nope. Neither is God us nor like us. He is The Creator/Designer and we are His....creation."
But the message doesn't stop there...
You see I think the reason why we've come up with such "empty philosophies" (Colossians 2:8), especially this one concerning a god within ourselves is 1) we don't want to face the sin/corruption/disobedience/brokenness in our own lives & 2) we believe God to be dead/distant/abandoning
Please read with me Hebrews 10 and then Jeremiah 31.
I feel like we're over here like...
...Spongbob, a sea critter, worriedly grasping for the toxic air in the squirrel, Sandy's, underwater tree-dome...
You think, you believe, everything under the sun but not the fact that God is here FOR YOU. That He CARES for you...that He's all up in YOUR business...
You've grasped and searched for Him and He wasn't there, is that it?
Or is it more like this:
Like a tattoo when freshly inked, the foreign substance sinks slowly into our blood stream...into our core...into our hearts and brains. Like a tattoo, God's Holy Spirit marks or seals us as God's children-Ephesians 4:30
Like this beautiful cracked glass mosiac bottle, we were just several pieces left shattered on the ground. Although in the beginning we were perfect, without blemishes, created by the Master, we chose our own downfall. Till the One greater than us came when we needed it the most and put us back together. That process took something we couldn't manage/understand. That process was our Designer humbling himself into our position and barring our weight instead. Jesus held the absolute perfect and Only stabilization we needed. Then He not only recreated our mess into beauty but filled our empty shells with a Living Water-His Holy Spirit.
Today you can have that Holy Spirit that gives peace like no other and marks you as a child of God. Will you humble yourself and admit you can't do this life thing by yourself? Do you honestly believe that all of your good out ways your bad? How bad does bad have to be to have consequences? God loves you. He is waiting for you. You do not complete Him but He completes you. He knows exactly what you need when you need it. He is your beloved Father who has never forsaken you. And you are His beloved son/daughter He chose to die for. He's saying, "come home."
(image taken from Michelangelo - Sistine Chapel Creation of Adam at the Vatican)
You chill'n back, apathetically lifting out a finger to connect with the God who did/does everything for you?
Let me remind you that God, our Great Designer, the Only Perfect One, the Wholly Holy Divine came in flesh and bore the punishment you deserved for the crimes you try to ignore or play off like it's not a big deal. He not only took the fall, but defeated the powerlessness you & I have over death. Then He NOT ONLY did that, but gave us His Spirit to dwell within us. So we're not standing there like Spongbob reaching out for something that's not there-HE'S RIGHT HERE!
Take a closer look at Hebrews 10 verses 15-18
Or as Jeremiah verses 33 first claims it to be as:
"This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel
after that time,” declares the Lord.
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people."
What the writers are referring to is this day church folks label as Pentecost (Acts 2). After Jesus went to be back with His Father, He did not abandon us but instead left us something greater than Himself. That gift is called the Holy Spirit. (We caught a glimpse of Him in Genesis 1:2)
In the Old Testament/Old Promise God made with His people, the Holy Spirit only resided on only a couple men/women at rare occasions. But now, now we have it IN us.
Simply put, I summarized these readings and contemplation with this:
it's on me, it's in me. But is it who I am?
Like a tattoo God's Law is embedded on ALL of our hearts regardless if we accept it or not. {That Law is referring to Exodus 20:1-17}
Like a tattoo when freshly inked, the foreign substance sinks slowly into our blood stream...into our core...into our hearts and brains. Like a tattoo, God's Holy Spirit marks or seals us as God's children-Ephesians 4:30
I frankly hate it when people, mainly those who have become so "open-minded that their brain falls out" as my friend calls it, looks at my Hebrew in-scripted tattoo & comments "we are all God's children". Why, yes and no...(but I can't always get in theological debates at work, where it normally happens). True we are all creations of God. But like Woody in Toy Story marked with his owner Andy's name, we are not God's until we are marked with Him. That mark is the Holy Spirit.
This takes me to our issue numero uno: 1) we don't want to face the sin/corruption/disobedience/brokenness in our own lives
For in correspondence to this issue, I came across another issue while drawing into/meditating on the Word:
In Matthew 12:33-37 Jesus makes it clear that it is not what goes into our body but what comes out
Sooo where, how, what do we do with this?
Does it conflict with having the Holy Spirit dwell inside us?
Well, let's see here, once again Jesus is talking to the religious people. Do you know what else Jesus says to religious people? James 1:27
IT'S ABOUT WHAT YOU DO!!!
You deep philosophers are out there like, "so what you're telling me is like God is like a consequentalist or something?"
(For those not so philosophical, consequentalism basically says "the end justifies the means".) In which, if you read http://samanthareeser.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-end-doesnt-justify-means.html you'd know my stand point.
So if God is not this, is He more deontological? (Which is simply put the opposite of the other view).
To this I personally say both and neither. For I must complete my previous statement:
IT'S ABOUT WHAT YOU DO...ABOUT WHO YOU ARE!!!!!!!
God, your Father DOES CARE about what happens and He ALSO CARES for YOU.
Traveling once again back to the beginning, let's look at Genesis 1:27-31, 2
The reason why you're craving to be "a god" or "perfect" is because in the beginning you/the human race was perfect. Perfect with ourselves and with God and nature. But because of God's great love for us, in the beginning He also provided us with free will. That enabled us to make our own choices. One of those choices was to be disobedient to what God asked them/us to do. That choice severed our perfection and left us broken.
It's kinda like when your parents told you not to do something and this something was very very serious, but you ended up doing it anyway. Every choice we make has a consequence....however, we now had/have an identity issue because of sin.
We reached, reached and reached. Grasping to make things right with God, with nature and with ourselves (this is where open-mindedness comes from). All these attempts were/are meaningless...until Jesus came/comes (For He is coming again). He came to live beside us and in us...but He is not us.
I see it like this:
Like this beautiful cracked glass mosiac bottle, we were just several pieces left shattered on the ground. Although in the beginning we were perfect, without blemishes, created by the Master, we chose our own downfall. Till the One greater than us came when we needed it the most and put us back together. That process took something we couldn't manage/understand. That process was our Designer humbling himself into our position and barring our weight instead. Jesus held the absolute perfect and Only stabilization we needed. Then He not only recreated our mess into beauty but filled our empty shells with a Living Water-His Holy Spirit.Today you can have that Holy Spirit that gives peace like no other and marks you as a child of God. Will you humble yourself and admit you can't do this life thing by yourself? Do you honestly believe that all of your good out ways your bad? How bad does bad have to be to have consequences? God loves you. He is waiting for you. You do not complete Him but He completes you. He knows exactly what you need when you need it. He is your beloved Father who has never forsaken you. And you are His beloved son/daughter He chose to die for. He's saying, "come home."
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