As I was saying, I believe the Word of God calls the part of thinking that is characterized by conscious awareness, analysis and deliberate volition the "mind". It refers to the part of thinking characterized by a less direct awareness, uncritical receptivity and reflex as the "heart".
We know that our minds, through the process of internalization, condition or program our hearts. I have not yet done exhaustive word studies on these things, but I believe the Bible indicates the same thing.
quote:
20 My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings.
21 Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart.
22 For they are life unto those who find them, and health to all their flesh.
23 Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.
Proverbs 4:20-23
Those things that we deliberately pay attention to, and think about as a matter of habit, condition the thoughts and intents of our hearts.
quote:
19 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where theives break through and steal,
20 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where theives do not break through nor steal;
21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
Matthew 6:19-21
What are "treasures"? They are the things to which we attach value. The things to which we attach value with our minds become the things of value in our hearts.
Love,
Steve
P.S. - Like I said, I haven't had time to do exhaustive word studies on these things yet, so if any of you find verses you think affirm or disaffirm my line of thinking, please bring them up.
In our culture we often hear this advice, "Just follow your heart." There's only one problem with that,
quote:
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?
Jeremiah 17:9
The heart is deceitful !?!
How can that be?
quote:
Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord pondereth the hearts.
Proverbs 21:2
Every thought and intent that comes out of a person's HEART seems right to that person, because he, through the habitual use of his own MIND, put those thoughts and intents in there to begin with. The heart is uncritically receptive to the habits of the mind.
When those thoughts and intents come back out, they don't seem like things that should be subject to analysis. They seem self-evident. They seem true. They just seem right.
When Hitler was committing his atrocities, he thought in his heart that he was doing the right things. That's how the habitual thoughts of his mind had conditioned the thoughts of his heart.
If my heart can't tell whether it's thoughts and intents are good or bad, how can I know that I'm not saying and doing evil, all the while believing myself to be saying and doing what's right?
Jeremiah 17:9 asked, who can know the heart? Proverbs 21:2 supplied the answer, the Lord ponders the heart.
quote:
4 The word of God is quick ["zao" = "living"], and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner ["kritikos" = "critic"] of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
Hebrews 4:12
The living Word of God is a critic of the thoughts and intents of our hearts.
Now "the living Word of God" is not just the ink on the page, the letter of the law. In order for the written Word to live, the things written in it must be compared and contrasted with the things God is communicating to us by means of His spirit. In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall a matter be established. Where the written Word of God and the spirit of God working in us agree, then the matter is established.
When a thought or intent of our heart rises up into our consciousness, we need to compare and contrast that thought or intent with matters established by the living Word of God. The living Word gives us critiques of the content of our hearts.
In order to know and do God's will, we have to submit the thoughts and intents of our hearts to the critique of the living Word of God.
But... every way of a man is right in his own eyes. What could possibly move a person to submit what seems so right to ANYBODY'S critque?
That's why anytime I feel "out of it" in my relationship with God and His son Jesus I must come to grips with the fact that I work overtime to appear RIGHT in my own eyes.
Jesus said "Blessed are the humble - the poor in spirit." The language of the Lordship of Jesus seems to be laden with concepts of humility, brokeness, willful submission, suspension of justice...this seems to fly in the face of the language of our culture...Winning, control, RIGHT.
No wonder Ted Turner called Christianity a religion for losers. It would appear, for the time being, that he is right.
In order to know and do God's will, we have to submit the thoughts and intents of our hearts to the critique of the living Word of God.
But... every way of a man is right in his own eyes. What could possibly move a person to submit what seems so right to ANYBODY'S critique?
How about... !!!FEAR!!!
Gasp!
Specifically... the!!!!!! FEAR OF GOD!!!!!!
Oh NOOOooooOOOOOoooOOOOoooooo!?!
We can't FEAR God!
FEAR is the law of believing operating in reverse.
FEAR is "F"alse "E"vidence "A"ppearing "R"eal.
FEAR is never a good thing.
FEAR always encases.
FEAR always enslaves.
FEAR always binds.
Sure, the Bible uses the word "phobos", but in relation to God, that doesn't mean "FEAR" fear, it only means "respect". We tip our hats to Him if we meet Him on the street. We stand up and give Him our seats on the bus. When we speak to Him, we call Him "Sir", and use a respectful tone of voice.
Are those things right? If not, then why do they SOUND so right to those of us who were influenced by TWI? Perhaps because they were things we internalized?
In reality, what IS fear?
It is an emotion, a mental prompting that urges us to move.
Fear is triggered when we recognize that something, in some way, has more power than we have, and can potentially hurt us.
Fear urges us to move in such a way that we come into a safe relation with that which we fear.
Fear, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. It is a protective feature God designed into us. Fear becomes destructive only when we fear the wrong things, or move in such a way that we don't come into a safe relation.
Now, part of my definition of something that triggers fear was "and can potentially hurt us."
Is that a reasonable thing to say about God? Does He have the power to hurt us?
quote:
5 Trust in the Lord with all thine heart;
and lean not unto thine own understanding.
6 In all thy ways acknowledge him,
and he shall direct thy paths.
7 Be not wise in thine own eyes:
Fear the Lord, and depart from evil.
8 It shall be health to thy navel, and marrow to thy bones.
Proverbs 3:5-8
Here we have the admonitions "trust in the Lord" and "fear the Lord" in the same song, almost within a breath of each other. Aren't they contradictory?
The double account of creation in Genesis emphasizes two aspects of God. First, His power in bringing creation to pass, and second, the love that He has toward His creation.
Power and love, they go together in God.
It's like the illustration Wierwille used to give, about the man with a flat tire. If I came along and said "I want to help you, but I don't have a jack" I would have the love, but not the power. If I came along and said "I've got a jack, but I'm not going to help YOU" I'd have the power, but not the love.
Without God's love, His power wouldn't just be fearful, but insanely terrifying. Without God's power, His love would be uselessly wimpy.
When we recognize God's power, we know that He DOES have the ability to hurt us and we fear Him. When we recognize His love, we know that He isn't going to hurt us, even though he has the power to do so, and we trust Him.
Remember that business in Proverbs 3:7, "Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the Lord and depart from evil"?
What does it mean to be "wise in thine own eyes"? It means to trust that the thoughts and intents of your own heart are ALWAYS right. What does it mean to "fear the Lord"? it means to submit the thoughts and intents of your heart to the critique of the living Word of God.
With this understanding of the fear of God, let's look at another passage,
quote:
31 The ear that heareth the reproof of life abideth among the wise.
32 He that refuseth instruction depiseth his own soul: but he that heareth reproof getteth understanding.
33 The fear of the Lord is the instruction of wisdom; and before honour is humility.
Proverbs 15:31-33
When we fear the Lord, when we recognize His power, we become willing to submit the thoughts and intents of our hearts to His critique. If a particular thought is right, He will let us know, and we can retain that thought. If a particular intent is wrong, then His critique will reprove us, and we can correct that intent.
Just one quick comment Steve. I think you're carrying on a doctrine we learned in the Way that I humbly ask you to reconsider. You said
quote:
What does it mean to "fear the Lord"? it means to submit the thoughts and intents of your heart to the critique of the living Word of God.
I humbly submit that you are equating the Scripture with the Lord. If one were to follow your premise, he would have to check his heartfelt beliefs against the Scripture.
But the Scripture is not always clear and is sometimes self contradictory.
More to the point, the Scripture itself says in numerous places that we are to supposed to grow into a relationship with God and Christ via the indwelling holy spirit.
My point is, If you want to know if the thoughts of your heart are right, why not just pray about it? Why not just ask your heavenly Father and use the access to Him provided by the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ? Or, if you prefer, why not just ask the Lord himself. He is in us is he not? One of them is surely willing to provide guidance. Indeed Paul wrote in Thessalonians that Christ will direct our hearts into the love of God (II Thess 3:5).
I have come to the conclusion that as we grow, we are not supposed to be continually bound to a written creed, but more in tune with Our Father and Our Lord.
So if one's heart needs corecting, why not take it straight to the Lord instead of breaking out a concordance and a book or three and doing all that retermorizing and such?
Jerry - God bless you, sir! It's been too long since I heard from you. The dialogues you and I used to have are some of my fondest internet memories. I hope everything has been going well with you!
You wrote,
quote:
I humbly submit that you are equating the Scripture with the Lord. If one were to follow your premise, he would have to check his heartfelt beliefs against the Scripture.
This is what I wrote,
quote:
The living Word of God is a critic of the thoughts and intents of our hearts.
Now "the living Word of God" is not just ink on the page, the letter of the law. In order for the written Word to live, the things written in it must be compared and contrasted with the things God is communicating to us by means of His spirit. In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall a matter be established. Where the written Word of God and the spirit of God working in us agree, then the matter is established.
I'm not equating the Scripture with the Lord in every sense. The Lord is living in and of himself. The written Word only lives when we combine our consideration of it with the kind of conversational relationship with the Lord that you recommend. I believe God put His written Word into objective reality so that we would have an objective standard to test our subjective experiences against. Without an ongoing conversation with God, we could lapse into hypocritcal legalism. But if we talk to spirits without an objective standard, we can fall into emotionalistic spiritualism.
If one were to follow my premise, he would INDEED have to check his heartfelt beliefs against the Scripture.
quote:
But the Scripture is not always clear and sometimes self contradictory...
...if one's heart needs correcting, why not take it straight to the Lord instead of breaking out a concordance and a book or three and doing all that retemorizing and stuff?
Checking your heartfelt beliefs against the Scripture doesn't necessarily mean having a fluent, non-contradictory grasp of the whole book. For the most part, it doesn't require concordances and retemories. "Don't lie, don't cheat, don't steal. Do unto other as you would have them do unto you." There isn't much difficult about that.
What do you talk with God about? I talk with Him about what's in my heart, and what's in His Word. I've learned most about the Bible by doing that. Breaking out the concordance only confirms or denies what I think God is teaching me. And that has been VERY VALUABLE at times when I've mistaken what I thought I was being taught. That's part of the reason I asked people to point out verses they think might confirm or disaffirm what I'm teaching. I may be wrong.
God knows how much and what parts of the Scripture each one of us knows. He knows how to work with each one of us, if we allow Him to.
So, what happens when a person doesn't fear the Lord?
I need to make a few points clear before launching into this particular consideration:
I believe the fear of God can be taught,
quote:
11 Come, ye children, hearken unto me: I will teach you the fear of the Lord.
Proverbs 34:11
I believe the fear of God is something a person chooses,
quote:
28 Then shall they call upon me [the personification of Wisdom], but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me:
29 For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord.
Proverbs 1:28&29
I don't think a person either fears the Lord, or doesn't fear the Lord, as a matter of who they are, for their whole life long. I think there are times when we who think about it do it, and other times when we don't.
I think fearing God is something we have to keep doing, thought by thought. I don't think the catagories of "those who fear God" and "those who don't" are absolute. I think those terms refer to a person's predominant habit of mind, not necessarily to every particular decision.
I don't think "not fearing God" is the same thing as having a reprobate mind. A person who doesn't fear God is still exercising a form of judgment, even if erroneously. But the person who knowingly surrenders his responsibility to judge loses it, barring repentance and an act of God's mercy and grace.
Those things being said, let's look at Psalm 36. I'm going to use the NIV to avoid some KJV archaisms.
quote:
1 An oracle is within my heart
concerning the sinfulness of the wicked:
There is no fear of God
before his eyes.
2 For in his own eyes he flatters himself
too much to detect or hate his sin.
3 The words of his mouth are wicked and deceitful;
he has ceased to be wise and to do good.
4 Even on his bed he plots evil;
he commits himself to a sinful course
and does not reject what is wrong.
Psalms 36:1-4
Remember, the fear of God moves us to submit the thoughts and intents of our hearts to the critique of the living Word of God. We need to do this because our hearts themselves are deceitful. Whatever things come out of our hearts seem right to us, whether they actually are or not, because we are the ones who put those things in there to begin with, through our habitual thinking.
Fear stems from a recognition of differences in power.
"There is no fear of God before his eyes."
"Before his eyes" indicates what a person pays habitual attention to. A person who does not fear God habitually ignores the difference in power between himself and God.
"For in his eyes he flatters himself too much to detect or hate his sin."
In order for a person to ignore the diffence in power between himself and God, he either has to falsely elevate himself, in his own estimation, to the same power level as God, or falsely reduce God's power to the same level as his own. He flatters himself.
Since he is not willing to submit the thoughts and intents of his heart to the critique of God's living Word, he cannot DETECT the evil in his own heart, and hence, cannot hate it.
"The words of his mouth are wicked and deceitful: he has ceased to be wise and to do good."
The words of his mouth are wicked because they are WRONG. Have they always been wrong? Not necessarily. The verse says he has "ceased to be wise". There may well have been a time when the words that came out of his mouth were RIGHT. It may well be the SAME words still coming out of his mouth, but the time for them has passed, or the need of application has changed.
"Even on his bed he plots evil." In the innermost part of his being, when nobody else is around, he still thinks wrong things, because many of the thoughts and intents of his heart are still wrong. How would he know the difference?
"He commits himself to a sinful course." He makes bad decisions, and sticks to them.
"...and does not reject what is wrong." How COULD he reject it? He can't even recognize it, because he trusts his own heart more than he trusts the living Word of God!
Hi Steve. Thanks for the greeting. I have enjoyed our online discussions as well. Sorry I should have read your post more carefully. I'll go back and finish.
Jerry - I notice you sign your posts with "Peace". I sign my posts with "Love". If we ever get together, we can have a "Peace & Love" flashback to the '60s :-)
Quick review: we've seen that a person has to focus the attentive, analytical, deliberately volitional part of his mental activity whenever he learns a new skill or way of thinking. I think the Bible calls this part of a person's mental activity the "mind".
As the new skill or way of thinking becomes routine, the uncritically receptive, unconscious, reflexive part of the person's mental activity takes over performing that function. I think this part is called the "heart".
The process of the heart taking over the mind's duties is called "internalization".
We learned that the heart is deceptive above all things, because every thought and intention that comes out of a person's heart seems right to that person. This is because those thoughts and intents were internalized by that same person's own habitual thoughts.
A particular thought or intent may or may not be right, but we CANNOT judge the thoughts and intents of our own hearts by ourselves. We need to receive critique from a critic.
The living Word of God gives us critiques of the thoughts and intents of our hearts, as we compare and contrast those thoughts and intents with what we find in the written Word and what the Spirit of God is communicating with us.
The fear of God is the emotion that urges us to recognize that something in our hearts may be wrong, even though it "feels SO right" to us.
We saw that a person who has no fear of God can unknowingly fall into all sorts of errors, because the things in his heart seem right to him, and he has no critic.
Now let's look at hypocrisy.
What is it?
quote:
27 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees! for you are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.
28 Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
Matthew 23:27&28
These hypocrites are religious leaders whose outward behavior mimics godliness, but the thoughts and intents of their hearts are not right. Do these religious leaders realize that the contents of their hearts are wrong?
No, they don't, because they aren't willing to submit those contents to the critique of the living Word of God.
The reason they aren't willing is because, in their eyes, the power of men's opinions is greater than the power of God.
quote:
"...outwardly appear righteous unto men..." Matthew 23:28
"...that they may have glory of men..." Matthew 6:2
"...that they may be seen of men..." Matthew 6:5
"...that they may appear unto men..." Matthew 6:16
Do these religious leaders want to appear righteous to just any old people?
No, they want to be attractive to those they consider to have power. What people have power over them? The crowds and their superiors in the religious hierarchy. They put up a show of religiousity to gain the adulation of the crowds, and the approval of their religious bosses.
And they DO NOT SEE ANYTHING WRONG with that! Because it is a way of life that they have internalized.
Where does hypocrisy come from?
quote:
"16 For the leaders of this people cause them to err; and they that are led of them are destroyed.
"17a Therefore the Lord shall have no joy in their young men, neither shall have mercy on their fatherless and widows: for every one is an hypocrite and an evil doer, and every mouth speaketh folly..."
Isaiah 9:16&17a
15b "...for from the prophets of Jerusalem is profaneness ["hypocrisy"] gone forth into all the land."
Jeremiah 23:15b
Remember, we saw from Psalm 34:11 that the fear of God can be taught. Religious leaders can ALSO teach their followers to fear them, the leaders, more than they fear God. Through this teaching, hypocrisy spreads throughout the people, and they DON'T SEE ANYTHING WRONG with it, because they have internalized the teaching.
What happens to doctrine in a religious organization that has become infested with hypocrisy?
quote:
6b ...Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition.
7 Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you saying,
8 This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their hearts are far from me.
9 But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
Matthew 15:6b-9
Since these religious leaders fear men more than God, they unconsciously replace His Word with what they have internalized, the traditions and commandments of men. They don't recognize that what's actually written in the Word takes precedence over THEIR LEADER'S OWN WORDS.
It's interesting to look at the passage in Isaiah from which Jesus quoted,
quote:
13 Wherefore the Lord said, forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men:
14 Therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvellous work and a wonder: for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid.
Isaiah 29:13&14
The wisdom of their wise men shall perish and the understanding of their prudent shall be hid.
There WERE wise men...
...but their wisdom perished.
There WERE prudent men...
...but their understanding was hid.
The hypocrisy they learned from their leaders replaced their fear of God. Remember, "There is no fear of God before his eyes. For in his own eyes he flatters himself too much to detect or hate his sin" (Psalms 36:1b&2).
"Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools" (Romans 1:22)
Are hypocritical religious leaders without hope?
quote:
25 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.
26 Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.
Matthew 23:25&26
In other words, if you're a religious leader, get honest with God in your heart.
I have only a few more episodes for this topic, but I'm going to have to take a break until Monday.
I don't know, Steve. This method strikes me as being inherently futile. And exhausting, too. If your "heart" is made up of your previous habits, and your habits are good ones (aligned with God's Word, or however you phrased it), then why would your heart still be deceitful? After putting all that effort into developing good habits in order to have a good heart, why would you again have to evaluate your heart's contents? At what point do you simply live in a way that is pleasing to God without being under constant scrutiny? Or don't you?
To me, you seem to be describing someone with an overactive conscience, on the verge of constant internal shaming. Those hypocrites you describe feed off of that shame.
I'm a little curious what your reason is for posting this. Is it a warning to "leaders"? -- letting them know that you're on to them? Is it a method for attaining a knowledge of God? If so, surely you must realize that two equally "good" people may value different things in different degrees. In other words, maybe I value loyalty and you value honesty, but we both value virtue. Must we all value the same things to the same degree in the same way using the same method?
I appreciate that you voiced your concerns, laleo, and didn't just blow off the things I'm writing.
Back around the holidays of '73, I was on a submarine going crazy. I had read the Bible as a course requirement in college without really understanding or believing it. I wasn't a particularly religious guy.
Two years previously, my fiance had dumped me in what I found to be a very painful way. For two years my feelings had been sliding downhill. I thought to myself, over and over again, "I feel bad because she dumped me" and "I feel bad because of what the Navy is making me do."
Two times previously, during that two years, I had stood on the edge of going crazy, but I had been able to change something, somehow, and pull myself back from the edge. This time, I KNEW I wasn't going to make it.
Something HAD to change. There was nothing about the sea or ship that I could change. There was nothing about the people around me I could change. There was nothing about my schedule or lifestyle I could change. And I was going crazy.
I was by myself standing watch in the engineroom lower level. I was sobbing, and I began to hyperventilate. As a last resort, without any expectation of results, I literally cried out "God help me..."
As I did so, He brought to my remembrance a verse where Jesus had said He would do anything we asked, if we asked in His name, and I finished up... "in the name of Jesus Christ."
My breathing returned to normal and I calmed down. I knew I wasn't going to go crazy.
Shortly thereafter, I don't remember exactly when, He put a decision before me. I didn't hear an audible voice or anything like that, but He presented me with the possibility that I felt bad because I had decided to feel bad. Then my pride welled up. "How DARE He think such a thing?"
But then I swallowed it, and admitted what I knew to be truth. After that He gave me to understand that if I had chosen to feel bad, then I could also choose to feel good, and He began teaching me HOW to change the things that were in my heart.
That was a little more than 31 years ago, and it was long before I ever heard of TWI. I've been able to understand lumps of this stuff over the decades, but it wasn't until a week ago last Thursday that it all came together.
The Lord never expected me to change everything all at once. And it started out one word at a time (the first one was "This is a piece of s**t!").
The Lord leads each one of us along at the proper pace. It isn't my job to say how specifically any individual should apply these things. That's the Lord's job. My job is just to explain what I've experienced, in Biblical terms if possible, so that other people know they can do it too.
When leaders take on extra privileges, they also take on extra responsibilities. I hope you understand more as I complete the thought of this thread, which I will continue doing in the morning.
I can empathize with your story in that there was a time long ago when I spiraled downward after a series of one difficult circumstance after the other, each worse than the one before, in a period of about six months. All my usual coping skills failed me. It took me a couple of years to begin to feel "normal" again, and that was with a lot of effort, misdirected at times, but ultimately life-enhancing. When I look back on those random pieces of grace that preserved my sanity, I don't know how I could ever package that grace into a formula to pass along to another in need, except to suggest that they keep their heart open to kindness (and also to offer them kindness). I wonder (and you don't have to answer this) if that same set of circumstances visited you now, decades later, even knowing so much more than you knew then, wouldn't it still leave you reeling?
One time, a few years ago, I was going through a minor rough patch, and searching for a way up and out, and a friend turned to me and asked, "What are you holding onto?" That question alone was enough to point me in the right direction, and I'm grateful she asked it.
Actually, I agree with you maybe more than it seems. I think our thoughts, feelings, and (especially) actions do contribute to our own happiness (or lack of it). But from the way you've told your story, I wonder if some of your anxiety didn't arise from your own sense of honor being violated. Don't you think that it's the people who most aspire to live rightly who also suffer the most, simply because they care?
So far, it seems that there's an aspect of your solution to suffering that might inadvertently further suffering, by suggesting that we have control over things we perhaps don't control. (Or maybe it's just my own visceral reaction to anything that resembles the "renewed mind.")
I look forward to hearing the rest of what you have to offer.
laleo - Looking back, I realize that it was remiss of me to start this thread without mentioning here that it is an ancillary thread to a point I wanted to make on the "Trinity has met its match" thread.
It's been about a week. Four of us live in our household. Three of us, including myself, were down with medical difficulties that made it hard for me to get to the computer. My own particular difficulty would have made it hard to post coherently, even if I had gotten here.
I know, I know, some of you have doubts about my ability to post coherently even when I'm NOT sleep deprived.
I need to do some things to fix this thread, but not today.
The next thing we are going to do on this thread is examine the question, did Wierwille fear God? Then look at how Wierwille's fear/non-fear of God influenced the attitudes toward God of those of us who were Wierwille's former followers.
It's subtle. We hid it in our hearts without even knowing that was what we were doing. Flushing the errors (in the sense of flushing game out from under cover) takes some soul-searching, in a most literal sense of that phrase.
I like it. A lot. I do think the original premise lacks a bit. I feel confident that the heart goes beyond our internalized life. But I'd agree that it includes these things. Though not all internalized things can properly be called "of teh heart". I mean, the fine left hand shifts & precise right hand feel involved in playing Bach's #1 cello suite on the guitar are mechanical/nerve/muscle memory items. My response to the music, the place I go to play it with meaning...that's the heart.
The fact that we so easily imprint things when we are learning them adds weight to Jeremiah's charge, Jer 1:10 "See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to
throw down, to build, and to plant."
Us poor Wayfers (among many others) do well to heed this charge. If we are to build and plant effectively, we have some destructive work to do first. We've internalized a pattern of learning & of relating to Bible knowledge. I think it deserves the axe.
I didn't originally intend this to be a stand-alone thread. It arose out of discussion on the thread entitled "The Trinity has met it's {sic} match!"
On Feb. 11, 05, 10:28, I posted on page 13 of that thread,
quote:
1. The actions that the leaders of CES take do not line up with the words they speak.
2. The leaders of CES seem to be oblivious to the truth that their actions do not line up with their words.
3. This blindness to their own incongruity disqualifies them from exercising responsible leadership, the same way a big dose of pain killer disqualifies a person from operating heavy machinery.
On Feb. 13, '05, 14:16, still on page 13 of that thread I wrote,
quote:
I received a jolt of "sunesis" last Thursday [Feb. 10th]. I've spent the intervening time developing an articulation of it. It applies to the theme of this thread ["The Trinity has met it's {sic} match!"], but I need to start another thread just for that topic... I'm going to start the new thread tomorrow. Its title will be "Internalization."
I think if I was starting this thread today, its title would somehow contain the phrase "the fear of God".
The nature of the question and the qualities of the evidence:
In one of the earliest sessions of my aesthetics class, I ask the students, "What is the difference between 'objective' and 'subjective'?" I don't give them an answer. I make them develop one themselves, by comparing and contrasting the definitions of the two words.
The word that the two definitions have in common is the word "mind". When we carefully contrast the two definitions we see that "objective" refers to something that exists or happens independently of the mind, "subjective" happens within, or in relation to the mind.
The question "Did Wierwille fear God?" is subjective on two counts. First,in order to answer it, we have to make an analysis of our own experience, which is subjective. Second, the question deals with something that was going on within Wierwille's mind.
Does this mean there is no objective evidence addressing the question? No, but it isn't the same kind of evidence we could use to perform, say, the chemical analysis of a particular substance. And it isn't the same kind of evidence required to convince "beyond a shadow of a doubt". We won't be able to write "Q.E.D." when we're finished, but we WILL be able to discern a preponderance of the evidence.
Psalm 36:1-4 sets forth some standards for assessing whether or not a person fears God;
quote:
1 An oracle is within my heart
concerning the sinfulness of the wicked:
There is no fear of God
before his eyes.
2 For in his own eyes he flatters himself
too much to detect or hate his sin.
3 The words of his mouth are wicked and deceitful;
he has ceased to be wise and to do good.
4 Even on his bed he plots evil;
he commits himself to a sinful course
and does not reject what is wrong.
Psalm 36:1-4 NIV
Using this as a starting place, we can examine some questions: how did Wierwille habitually regard the difference between his own power and the power of God? did Wierwille make a habit of flattering himself in his own eyes? so much so that he couldn't tell when something he was doing or saying was wrong? or to even care, if he knew it was wrong? were the words of his mouth wrong? did he say things in such a way that you couldn't tell when his words were wrong? did Wierwille cease to be wise? did he cease to do good? what did Wierwille plot in his private moments, perhaps in his motorcoach? did Wierwille make bad decisions? if so, did he stick to them even if they were wrong?
In my next post, I'll start addressing some of these questions.
outandabout - As Arnie would say, "I'll be bach!" I'm switching to third shift, so I'm going through a number of transformations, some of which are temporarily interrupting my work on this thread.
The next question we'll look at is "Did Wierwille fear God: how did Wierwille habitually regard the difference between his own power and the power of God?" I've been digging into the first few chapters of the PFAL book and the blue book in pursuit (I like that word, it makes me sound like I'm flying a WWI airplane) of information. I'll have some of it up soon. Thanks for your patience.
Did Wierwille fear God? How did Wierwille habitually regard the difference between his own power and the power of God?
Fear stems from a perceived difference in power. It motivates us to get into right relation with things that hold more power than we do. Is fear always wrong (PFAL pp 46&47)?
Certainly not! About 99% of the time fear is the healthiest thing we've got going. I am afraid to drive in front of an onrushing diesel. Is that wrong? How healthy IS it to drive in front of a speeding freight train? I recognize the diesel has a HECK of a lot more power than I have, and I stay in right relation with it, by staying off the tracks.
Should I fear God? You betcha! He's the One who CREATED onrushing diesels.He has a heck of a lot more power than THEY do. If I want to stay in right relation with one of those puppies, I definitely want to stay in right relation with GOD!
Some people are foolish enough to ignore the fear of God, just as some people are foolish enough to ignore the fear of diesels, and try to beat them to the crossing. In order to successfully (?) ignore the fear of God, a person needs to fool himself, in his own eyes, into thinking that his own power is somehow equal to the power of God.
Is that what Wierwille did? What did he think about the power of God?
First let's look at a passage from page 11 of PFAL:
quote:
In order to tap the resources of the power of God, one must know first of all... If we want to effectively tap the resources for the more abundant life, we must find out...
[emphasis added]
One of the first things Wierwille did was to equate the power of God with the more abundant life. We need to keep that in mind as we read some of Wierwille's other statements.
quote:
This [PFAL] is a book containing Biblical keys. ...it is designed to set before the reader the basic keys... so that the abundant life... will become evident to those who want to appropriate God's abundance in their lives.
(PFAL page 4)
"To appropriate" means "to take to or for one's self; take possession of". In PFAL, Wierwille presented "keys" he thought had enabled him to take possession of the power of God.
quote:
There is power in believing. There is power in this world to which you and I as born-again believers have easy access. ...This power is from God. ...The key involved is knowing and receiving His power, which is the basis on which the whole abundant life hinges. The law of believing brings phenomenal results to all those who apply and practice the principles.
[bTMS p 43]
For Wierwille, "the law of believing" was the primary key for taking possession of the power of God.
quote:
This is the great law in the Word of God. ...say it, believe it, and it will come to pass.
[PFAL p 35]
Wierwille separated God as a Person from His own power, and turned it into an impersonal, amoral force.
quote:
The law of believing is the greatest law in the Word of God. As a matter of fact, it is not only the greatest law in The Word, it is the greatest law in the whole world. Believing works for saint and sinner alike...
[PFAL p 32]
quote:
My wife and I began in the Christian ministry, plodding ahead with the things of God; but somehow we lacked an abundant life... As I looked about me at communities where I had served and among ministers with whom I worked, the abundant life was frequently not evident. In contrast to these Christian people, I could see that the secular world of non-Christians were manifesting a more abundant life than were members of the Church.
[PFAL p 3]
quote:
Believing is a law... On the negative side, fear is believing...
[PFAL p 37]
quote:
What one fears [believes] will surely come to pass. It is a law [the law of believing]. Have you ever heard about people who set the time of their death? When somebody says, "Well, this time next year I will not be here," if you are a betting man, bet your money; you are going to win. If a person makes up his mind that this time next year he is going to be dead, God would have to change the laws of the universe for the person not to be accommodated.
[PFAL p 44]
In Wierwille's eyes, God didn't care to what ends His power was put. In Wierwille's eyes, God's power was amoral, unaware of or indifferent to questions of right or wrong.
So we see that Wierwille conceived of God's power as an impersonal, amoral force that he could take for his own possession by applying the "law of believing".
There's more to this particular thought, but I'm out of time.
Well, if the law of believing works for saint and sinner alike, then why, in Wierwille's view, would a person want to become a Christian?
quote:
The law of believing works equally effectively for both the sinner and the saint; however, the believer, because of the spirit from God within him ["the gift of holy spirit"], may bring forth more abundantly.
[bTMS pp 44&45]
quote:
We are to put off filthiness, the works of evil from the least to the worst form, and subjectively receive God's Word [subjectively receive "the gift of holy spirit"] in the sense that we look to it and desire it because His Word is greater than we are [before we receive "the gift of holy spirit"]. The "engrafted word" is the total implanted Word of God which He planted so close to us that we can absorb it ["the gift of holy spirit", the power of God] until it [the power of God] becomes a part of us.
[bTMS p 9, emphasis added]
A "sinner" can tap into the power of God through the law of believing, but a "saint" can bring forth more abundantly, because the "saint" has absorbed, through believing, some of God's power, and that power has become a part of the "saint's" OWN SELF.
Wierwille was NOT concerned about a difference between God's power and his own. He thought that he had absorbed enough of God's power, through believing, that he no longer needed to reckon with God's own use of God's own power.
Anybody familiar with "matryoshka" dolls? ...those Russian nested dolls? ...dolls within dolls within dolls?
I think it would be best for me to back off from this thread for about a week.
I haven't opened up a can of worms in my thinking... I've opened up a matryoshka full of worms, and I have some serious sorting to do. I WILL be back, God willing!
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Steve Lortz
As I was saying, I believe the Word of God calls the part of thinking that is characterized by conscious awareness, analysis and deliberate volition the "mind". It refers to the part of thinking characterized by a less direct awareness, uncritical receptivity and reflex as the "heart".
We know that our minds, through the process of internalization, condition or program our hearts. I have not yet done exhaustive word studies on these things, but I believe the Bible indicates the same thing.
Those things that we deliberately pay attention to, and think about as a matter of habit, condition the thoughts and intents of our hearts.
What are "treasures"? They are the things to which we attach value. The things to which we attach value with our minds become the things of value in our hearts.
Love,
Steve
P.S. - Like I said, I haven't had time to do exhaustive word studies on these things yet, so if any of you find verses you think affirm or disaffirm my line of thinking, please bring them up.
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Steve Lortz
In our culture we often hear this advice, "Just follow your heart." There's only one problem with that,
The heart is deceitful !?!
How can that be?
Every thought and intent that comes out of a person's HEART seems right to that person, because he, through the habitual use of his own MIND, put those thoughts and intents in there to begin with. The heart is uncritically receptive to the habits of the mind.
When those thoughts and intents come back out, they don't seem like things that should be subject to analysis. They seem self-evident. They seem true. They just seem right.
When Hitler was committing his atrocities, he thought in his heart that he was doing the right things. That's how the habitual thoughts of his mind had conditioned the thoughts of his heart.
If my heart can't tell whether it's thoughts and intents are good or bad, how can I know that I'm not saying and doing evil, all the while believing myself to be saying and doing what's right?
Jeremiah 17:9 asked, who can know the heart? Proverbs 21:2 supplied the answer, the Lord ponders the heart.
The living Word of God is a critic of the thoughts and intents of our hearts.
Now "the living Word of God" is not just the ink on the page, the letter of the law. In order for the written Word to live, the things written in it must be compared and contrasted with the things God is communicating to us by means of His spirit. In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall a matter be established. Where the written Word of God and the spirit of God working in us agree, then the matter is established.
When a thought or intent of our heart rises up into our consciousness, we need to compare and contrast that thought or intent with matters established by the living Word of God. The living Word gives us critiques of the content of our hearts.
In order to know and do God's will, we have to submit the thoughts and intents of our hearts to the critique of the living Word of God.
But... every way of a man is right in his own eyes. What could possibly move a person to submit what seems so right to ANYBODY'S critque?
Think about that.
Love,
Steve
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Yanagisawa
yes...I dig.
That's why anytime I feel "out of it" in my relationship with God and His son Jesus I must come to grips with the fact that I work overtime to appear RIGHT in my own eyes.
Jesus said "Blessed are the humble - the poor in spirit." The language of the Lordship of Jesus seems to be laden with concepts of humility, brokeness, willful submission, suspension of justice...this seems to fly in the face of the language of our culture...Winning, control, RIGHT.
No wonder Ted Turner called Christianity a religion for losers. It would appear, for the time being, that he is right.
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Steve Lortz
Thanks, Yanagisawa!
More from me in the morning.
Love,
Steve
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Steve Lortz
So, here's where we left off:
How about... !!!FEAR!!!
Gasp!
Specifically... the!!!!!! FEAR OF GOD!!!!!!
Oh NOOOooooOOOOOoooOOOOoooooo!?!
We can't FEAR God!
FEAR is the law of believing operating in reverse.
FEAR is "F"alse "E"vidence "A"ppearing "R"eal.
FEAR is never a good thing.
FEAR always encases.
FEAR always enslaves.
FEAR always binds.
Sure, the Bible uses the word "phobos", but in relation to God, that doesn't mean "FEAR" fear, it only means "respect". We tip our hats to Him if we meet Him on the street. We stand up and give Him our seats on the bus. When we speak to Him, we call Him "Sir", and use a respectful tone of voice.
Are those things right? If not, then why do they SOUND so right to those of us who were influenced by TWI? Perhaps because they were things we internalized?
In reality, what IS fear?
It is an emotion, a mental prompting that urges us to move.
Fear is triggered when we recognize that something, in some way, has more power than we have, and can potentially hurt us.
Fear urges us to move in such a way that we come into a safe relation with that which we fear.
Fear, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. It is a protective feature God designed into us. Fear becomes destructive only when we fear the wrong things, or move in such a way that we don't come into a safe relation.
Now, part of my definition of something that triggers fear was "and can potentially hurt us."
Is that a reasonable thing to say about God? Does He have the power to hurt us?
Here we have the admonitions "trust in the Lord" and "fear the Lord" in the same song, almost within a breath of each other. Aren't they contradictory?
The double account of creation in Genesis emphasizes two aspects of God. First, His power in bringing creation to pass, and second, the love that He has toward His creation.
Power and love, they go together in God.
It's like the illustration Wierwille used to give, about the man with a flat tire. If I came along and said "I want to help you, but I don't have a jack" I would have the love, but not the power. If I came along and said "I've got a jack, but I'm not going to help YOU" I'd have the power, but not the love.
Without God's love, His power wouldn't just be fearful, but insanely terrifying. Without God's power, His love would be uselessly wimpy.
When we recognize God's power, we know that He DOES have the ability to hurt us and we fear Him. When we recognize His love, we know that He isn't going to hurt us, even though he has the power to do so, and we trust Him.
Remember that business in Proverbs 3:7, "Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the Lord and depart from evil"?
What does it mean to be "wise in thine own eyes"? It means to trust that the thoughts and intents of your own heart are ALWAYS right. What does it mean to "fear the Lord"? it means to submit the thoughts and intents of your heart to the critique of the living Word of God.
With this understanding of the fear of God, let's look at another passage,
When we fear the Lord, when we recognize His power, we become willing to submit the thoughts and intents of our hearts to His critique. If a particular thought is right, He will let us know, and we can retain that thought. If a particular intent is wrong, then His critique will reprove us, and we can correct that intent.
What happens when a person DOESN'T fear the Lord?
More later.
Love,
Steve
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Jbarrax
Just one quick comment Steve. I think you're carrying on a doctrine we learned in the Way that I humbly ask you to reconsider. You said
I humbly submit that you are equating the Scripture with the Lord. If one were to follow your premise, he would have to check his heartfelt beliefs against the Scripture.
But the Scripture is not always clear and is sometimes self contradictory.
More to the point, the Scripture itself says in numerous places that we are to supposed to grow into a relationship with God and Christ via the indwelling holy spirit.
My point is, If you want to know if the thoughts of your heart are right, why not just pray about it? Why not just ask your heavenly Father and use the access to Him provided by the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ? Or, if you prefer, why not just ask the Lord himself. He is in us is he not? One of them is surely willing to provide guidance. Indeed Paul wrote in Thessalonians that Christ will direct our hearts into the love of God (II Thess 3:5).
I have come to the conclusion that as we grow, we are not supposed to be continually bound to a written creed, but more in tune with Our Father and Our Lord.
So if one's heart needs corecting, why not take it straight to the Lord instead of breaking out a concordance and a book or three and doing all that retermorizing and such?
Peace
JerryB
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Steve Lortz
Jerry - God bless you, sir! It's been too long since I heard from you. The dialogues you and I used to have are some of my fondest internet memories. I hope everything has been going well with you!
You wrote,
This is what I wrote,
I'm not equating the Scripture with the Lord in every sense. The Lord is living in and of himself. The written Word only lives when we combine our consideration of it with the kind of conversational relationship with the Lord that you recommend. I believe God put His written Word into objective reality so that we would have an objective standard to test our subjective experiences against. Without an ongoing conversation with God, we could lapse into hypocritcal legalism. But if we talk to spirits without an objective standard, we can fall into emotionalistic spiritualism.
If one were to follow my premise, he would INDEED have to check his heartfelt beliefs against the Scripture.
Checking your heartfelt beliefs against the Scripture doesn't necessarily mean having a fluent, non-contradictory grasp of the whole book. For the most part, it doesn't require concordances and retemories. "Don't lie, don't cheat, don't steal. Do unto other as you would have them do unto you." There isn't much difficult about that.
What do you talk with God about? I talk with Him about what's in my heart, and what's in His Word. I've learned most about the Bible by doing that. Breaking out the concordance only confirms or denies what I think God is teaching me. And that has been VERY VALUABLE at times when I've mistaken what I thought I was being taught. That's part of the reason I asked people to point out verses they think might confirm or disaffirm what I'm teaching. I may be wrong.
God knows how much and what parts of the Scripture each one of us knows. He knows how to work with each one of us, if we allow Him to.
Thank you, Jerry!
Love,
Steve
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Steve Lortz
So, what happens when a person doesn't fear the Lord?
I need to make a few points clear before launching into this particular consideration:
I believe the fear of God can be taught,
I believe the fear of God is something a person chooses,
I don't think a person either fears the Lord, or doesn't fear the Lord, as a matter of who they are, for their whole life long. I think there are times when we who think about it do it, and other times when we don't.
I think fearing God is something we have to keep doing, thought by thought. I don't think the catagories of "those who fear God" and "those who don't" are absolute. I think those terms refer to a person's predominant habit of mind, not necessarily to every particular decision.
I don't think "not fearing God" is the same thing as having a reprobate mind. A person who doesn't fear God is still exercising a form of judgment, even if erroneously. But the person who knowingly surrenders his responsibility to judge loses it, barring repentance and an act of God's mercy and grace.
Those things being said, let's look at Psalm 36. I'm going to use the NIV to avoid some KJV archaisms.
Remember, the fear of God moves us to submit the thoughts and intents of our hearts to the critique of the living Word of God. We need to do this because our hearts themselves are deceitful. Whatever things come out of our hearts seem right to us, whether they actually are or not, because we are the ones who put those things in there to begin with, through our habitual thinking.
Fear stems from a recognition of differences in power.
"There is no fear of God before his eyes."
"Before his eyes" indicates what a person pays habitual attention to. A person who does not fear God habitually ignores the difference in power between himself and God.
"For in his eyes he flatters himself too much to detect or hate his sin."
In order for a person to ignore the diffence in power between himself and God, he either has to falsely elevate himself, in his own estimation, to the same power level as God, or falsely reduce God's power to the same level as his own. He flatters himself.
Since he is not willing to submit the thoughts and intents of his heart to the critique of God's living Word, he cannot DETECT the evil in his own heart, and hence, cannot hate it.
"The words of his mouth are wicked and deceitful: he has ceased to be wise and to do good."
The words of his mouth are wicked because they are WRONG. Have they always been wrong? Not necessarily. The verse says he has "ceased to be wise". There may well have been a time when the words that came out of his mouth were RIGHT. It may well be the SAME words still coming out of his mouth, but the time for them has passed, or the need of application has changed.
"Even on his bed he plots evil." In the innermost part of his being, when nobody else is around, he still thinks wrong things, because many of the thoughts and intents of his heart are still wrong. How would he know the difference?
"He commits himself to a sinful course." He makes bad decisions, and sticks to them.
"...and does not reject what is wrong." How COULD he reject it? He can't even recognize it, because he trusts his own heart more than he trusts the living Word of God!
Next time... hypocrisy.
Love,
Steve
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Jbarrax
Hi Steve. Thanks for the greeting. I have enjoyed our online discussions as well. Sorry I should have read your post more carefully. I'll go back and finish.
:-)
Peace
JerryB
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Steve Lortz
Jerry - I notice you sign your posts with "Peace". I sign my posts with "Love". If we ever get together, we can have a "Peace & Love" flashback to the '60s :-)
Love,
Steve
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Steve Lortz
Quick review: we've seen that a person has to focus the attentive, analytical, deliberately volitional part of his mental activity whenever he learns a new skill or way of thinking. I think the Bible calls this part of a person's mental activity the "mind".
As the new skill or way of thinking becomes routine, the uncritically receptive, unconscious, reflexive part of the person's mental activity takes over performing that function. I think this part is called the "heart".
The process of the heart taking over the mind's duties is called "internalization".
We learned that the heart is deceptive above all things, because every thought and intention that comes out of a person's heart seems right to that person. This is because those thoughts and intents were internalized by that same person's own habitual thoughts.
A particular thought or intent may or may not be right, but we CANNOT judge the thoughts and intents of our own hearts by ourselves. We need to receive critique from a critic.
The living Word of God gives us critiques of the thoughts and intents of our hearts, as we compare and contrast those thoughts and intents with what we find in the written Word and what the Spirit of God is communicating with us.
The fear of God is the emotion that urges us to recognize that something in our hearts may be wrong, even though it "feels SO right" to us.
We saw that a person who has no fear of God can unknowingly fall into all sorts of errors, because the things in his heart seem right to him, and he has no critic.
Now let's look at hypocrisy.
What is it?
These hypocrites are religious leaders whose outward behavior mimics godliness, but the thoughts and intents of their hearts are not right. Do these religious leaders realize that the contents of their hearts are wrong?
No, they don't, because they aren't willing to submit those contents to the critique of the living Word of God.
The reason they aren't willing is because, in their eyes, the power of men's opinions is greater than the power of God.
Do these religious leaders want to appear righteous to just any old people?
No, they want to be attractive to those they consider to have power. What people have power over them? The crowds and their superiors in the religious hierarchy. They put up a show of religiousity to gain the adulation of the crowds, and the approval of their religious bosses.
And they DO NOT SEE ANYTHING WRONG with that! Because it is a way of life that they have internalized.
Where does hypocrisy come from?
Remember, we saw from Psalm 34:11 that the fear of God can be taught. Religious leaders can ALSO teach their followers to fear them, the leaders, more than they fear God. Through this teaching, hypocrisy spreads throughout the people, and they DON'T SEE ANYTHING WRONG with it, because they have internalized the teaching.
What happens to doctrine in a religious organization that has become infested with hypocrisy?
Since these religious leaders fear men more than God, they unconsciously replace His Word with what they have internalized, the traditions and commandments of men. They don't recognize that what's actually written in the Word takes precedence over THEIR LEADER'S OWN WORDS.
It's interesting to look at the passage in Isaiah from which Jesus quoted,
The wisdom of their wise men shall perish and the understanding of their prudent shall be hid.
There WERE wise men...
...but their wisdom perished.
There WERE prudent men...
...but their understanding was hid.
The hypocrisy they learned from their leaders replaced their fear of God. Remember, "There is no fear of God before his eyes. For in his own eyes he flatters himself too much to detect or hate his sin" (Psalms 36:1b&2).
"Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools" (Romans 1:22)
Are hypocritical religious leaders without hope?
In other words, if you're a religious leader, get honest with God in your heart.
I have only a few more episodes for this topic, but I'm going to have to take a break until Monday.
Love,
Steve
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laleo
I don't know, Steve. This method strikes me as being inherently futile. And exhausting, too. If your "heart" is made up of your previous habits, and your habits are good ones (aligned with God's Word, or however you phrased it), then why would your heart still be deceitful? After putting all that effort into developing good habits in order to have a good heart, why would you again have to evaluate your heart's contents? At what point do you simply live in a way that is pleasing to God without being under constant scrutiny? Or don't you?
To me, you seem to be describing someone with an overactive conscience, on the verge of constant internal shaming. Those hypocrites you describe feed off of that shame.
I'm a little curious what your reason is for posting this. Is it a warning to "leaders"? -- letting them know that you're on to them? Is it a method for attaining a knowledge of God? If so, surely you must realize that two equally "good" people may value different things in different degrees. In other words, maybe I value loyalty and you value honesty, but we both value virtue. Must we all value the same things to the same degree in the same way using the same method?
Maybe I'm just not following you.
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Steve Lortz
I appreciate that you voiced your concerns, laleo, and didn't just blow off the things I'm writing.
Back around the holidays of '73, I was on a submarine going crazy. I had read the Bible as a course requirement in college without really understanding or believing it. I wasn't a particularly religious guy.
Two years previously, my fiance had dumped me in what I found to be a very painful way. For two years my feelings had been sliding downhill. I thought to myself, over and over again, "I feel bad because she dumped me" and "I feel bad because of what the Navy is making me do."
Two times previously, during that two years, I had stood on the edge of going crazy, but I had been able to change something, somehow, and pull myself back from the edge. This time, I KNEW I wasn't going to make it.
Something HAD to change. There was nothing about the sea or ship that I could change. There was nothing about the people around me I could change. There was nothing about my schedule or lifestyle I could change. And I was going crazy.
I was by myself standing watch in the engineroom lower level. I was sobbing, and I began to hyperventilate. As a last resort, without any expectation of results, I literally cried out "God help me..."
As I did so, He brought to my remembrance a verse where Jesus had said He would do anything we asked, if we asked in His name, and I finished up... "in the name of Jesus Christ."
My breathing returned to normal and I calmed down. I knew I wasn't going to go crazy.
Shortly thereafter, I don't remember exactly when, He put a decision before me. I didn't hear an audible voice or anything like that, but He presented me with the possibility that I felt bad because I had decided to feel bad. Then my pride welled up. "How DARE He think such a thing?"
But then I swallowed it, and admitted what I knew to be truth. After that He gave me to understand that if I had chosen to feel bad, then I could also choose to feel good, and He began teaching me HOW to change the things that were in my heart.
That was a little more than 31 years ago, and it was long before I ever heard of TWI. I've been able to understand lumps of this stuff over the decades, but it wasn't until a week ago last Thursday that it all came together.
The Lord never expected me to change everything all at once. And it started out one word at a time (the first one was "This is a piece of s**t!").
The Lord leads each one of us along at the proper pace. It isn't my job to say how specifically any individual should apply these things. That's the Lord's job. My job is just to explain what I've experienced, in Biblical terms if possible, so that other people know they can do it too.
When leaders take on extra privileges, they also take on extra responsibilities. I hope you understand more as I complete the thought of this thread, which I will continue doing in the morning.
Again, thank you, laleo!
Love,
Steve
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laleo
I can empathize with your story in that there was a time long ago when I spiraled downward after a series of one difficult circumstance after the other, each worse than the one before, in a period of about six months. All my usual coping skills failed me. It took me a couple of years to begin to feel "normal" again, and that was with a lot of effort, misdirected at times, but ultimately life-enhancing. When I look back on those random pieces of grace that preserved my sanity, I don't know how I could ever package that grace into a formula to pass along to another in need, except to suggest that they keep their heart open to kindness (and also to offer them kindness). I wonder (and you don't have to answer this) if that same set of circumstances visited you now, decades later, even knowing so much more than you knew then, wouldn't it still leave you reeling?
One time, a few years ago, I was going through a minor rough patch, and searching for a way up and out, and a friend turned to me and asked, "What are you holding onto?" That question alone was enough to point me in the right direction, and I'm grateful she asked it.
Actually, I agree with you maybe more than it seems. I think our thoughts, feelings, and (especially) actions do contribute to our own happiness (or lack of it). But from the way you've told your story, I wonder if some of your anxiety didn't arise from your own sense of honor being violated. Don't you think that it's the people who most aspire to live rightly who also suffer the most, simply because they care?
So far, it seems that there's an aspect of your solution to suffering that might inadvertently further suffering, by suggesting that we have control over things we perhaps don't control. (Or maybe it's just my own visceral reaction to anything that resembles the "renewed mind.")
I look forward to hearing the rest of what you have to offer.
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Steve Lortz
laleo - Looking back, I realize that it was remiss of me to start this thread without mentioning here that it is an ancillary thread to a point I wanted to make on the "Trinity has met its match" thread.
I'll go back and correct that as soon as I can.
I wanted to post more today, but my time is up.
Love,
Steve
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Steve Lortz
Exhaustion.
It's been about a week. Four of us live in our household. Three of us, including myself, were down with medical difficulties that made it hard for me to get to the computer. My own particular difficulty would have made it hard to post coherently, even if I had gotten here.
I know, I know, some of you have doubts about my ability to post coherently even when I'm NOT sleep deprived.
I need to do some things to fix this thread, but not today.
The next thing we are going to do on this thread is examine the question, did Wierwille fear God? Then look at how Wierwille's fear/non-fear of God influenced the attitudes toward God of those of us who were Wierwille's former followers.
It's subtle. We hid it in our hearts without even knowing that was what we were doing. Flushing the errors (in the sense of flushing game out from under cover) takes some soul-searching, in a most literal sense of that phrase.
All for now. I'll be back when I can get back.
Love,
Steve
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TheEvan
I like it. A lot. I do think the original premise lacks a bit. I feel confident that the heart goes beyond our internalized life. But I'd agree that it includes these things. Though not all internalized things can properly be called "of teh heart". I mean, the fine left hand shifts & precise right hand feel involved in playing Bach's #1 cello suite on the guitar are mechanical/nerve/muscle memory items. My response to the music, the place I go to play it with meaning...that's the heart.
The fact that we so easily imprint things when we are learning them adds weight to Jeremiah's charge, Jer 1:10 "See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to
throw down, to build, and to plant."
Us poor Wayfers (among many others) do well to heed this charge. If we are to build and plant effectively, we have some destructive work to do first. We've internalized a pattern of learning & of relating to Bible knowledge. I think it deserves the axe.
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Steve Lortz
I just added this to the top of this thread:
Love,
Steve
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Steve Lortz
Did Wierwille fear God?
The nature of the question and the qualities of the evidence:
In one of the earliest sessions of my aesthetics class, I ask the students, "What is the difference between 'objective' and 'subjective'?" I don't give them an answer. I make them develop one themselves, by comparing and contrasting the definitions of the two words.
The word that the two definitions have in common is the word "mind". When we carefully contrast the two definitions we see that "objective" refers to something that exists or happens independently of the mind, "subjective" happens within, or in relation to the mind.
The question "Did Wierwille fear God?" is subjective on two counts. First,in order to answer it, we have to make an analysis of our own experience, which is subjective. Second, the question deals with something that was going on within Wierwille's mind.
Does this mean there is no objective evidence addressing the question? No, but it isn't the same kind of evidence we could use to perform, say, the chemical analysis of a particular substance. And it isn't the same kind of evidence required to convince "beyond a shadow of a doubt". We won't be able to write "Q.E.D." when we're finished, but we WILL be able to discern a preponderance of the evidence.
Psalm 36:1-4 sets forth some standards for assessing whether or not a person fears God;
Using this as a starting place, we can examine some questions: how did Wierwille habitually regard the difference between his own power and the power of God? did Wierwille make a habit of flattering himself in his own eyes? so much so that he couldn't tell when something he was doing or saying was wrong? or to even care, if he knew it was wrong? were the words of his mouth wrong? did he say things in such a way that you couldn't tell when his words were wrong? did Wierwille cease to be wise? did he cease to do good? what did Wierwille plot in his private moments, perhaps in his motorcoach? did Wierwille make bad decisions? if so, did he stick to them even if they were wrong?
In my next post, I'll start addressing some of these questions.
Love,
Steve
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outandabout
This is a good thread. Hope you come back and continue.
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Steve Lortz
outandabout - As Arnie would say, "I'll be bach!" I'm switching to third shift, so I'm going through a number of transformations, some of which are temporarily interrupting my work on this thread.
The next question we'll look at is "Did Wierwille fear God: how did Wierwille habitually regard the difference between his own power and the power of God?" I've been digging into the first few chapters of the PFAL book and the blue book in pursuit (I like that word, it makes me sound like I'm flying a WWI airplane) of information. I'll have some of it up soon. Thanks for your patience.
Love,
Steve
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Steve Lortz
Did Wierwille fear God? How did Wierwille habitually regard the difference between his own power and the power of God?
Fear stems from a perceived difference in power. It motivates us to get into right relation with things that hold more power than we do. Is fear always wrong (PFAL pp 46&47)?
Certainly not! About 99% of the time fear is the healthiest thing we've got going. I am afraid to drive in front of an onrushing diesel. Is that wrong? How healthy IS it to drive in front of a speeding freight train? I recognize the diesel has a HECK of a lot more power than I have, and I stay in right relation with it, by staying off the tracks.
Should I fear God? You betcha! He's the One who CREATED onrushing diesels.He has a heck of a lot more power than THEY do. If I want to stay in right relation with one of those puppies, I definitely want to stay in right relation with GOD!
Some people are foolish enough to ignore the fear of God, just as some people are foolish enough to ignore the fear of diesels, and try to beat them to the crossing. In order to successfully (?) ignore the fear of God, a person needs to fool himself, in his own eyes, into thinking that his own power is somehow equal to the power of God.
Is that what Wierwille did? What did he think about the power of God?
First let's look at a passage from page 11 of PFAL:
One of the first things Wierwille did was to equate the power of God with the more abundant life. We need to keep that in mind as we read some of Wierwille's other statements.
"To appropriate" means "to take to or for one's self; take possession of". In PFAL, Wierwille presented "keys" he thought had enabled him to take possession of the power of God.
For Wierwille, "the law of believing" was the primary key for taking possession of the power of God.
Wierwille separated God as a Person from His own power, and turned it into an impersonal, amoral force.
In Wierwille's eyes, God didn't care to what ends His power was put. In Wierwille's eyes, God's power was amoral, unaware of or indifferent to questions of right or wrong.
So we see that Wierwille conceived of God's power as an impersonal, amoral force that he could take for his own possession by applying the "law of believing".
There's more to this particular thought, but I'm out of time.
Love,
Steve
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Steve Lortz
Well, if the law of believing works for saint and sinner alike, then why, in Wierwille's view, would a person want to become a Christian?
A "sinner" can tap into the power of God through the law of believing, but a "saint" can bring forth more abundantly, because the "saint" has absorbed, through believing, some of God's power, and that power has become a part of the "saint's" OWN SELF.
Wierwille was NOT concerned about a difference between God's power and his own. He thought that he had absorbed enough of God's power, through believing, that he no longer needed to reckon with God's own use of God's own power.
It would seem that Wierwille did not fear God.
As my Pop used to say, "So what!
More to come.
Love,
Steve
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Steve Lortz
Anybody familiar with "matryoshka" dolls? ...those Russian nested dolls? ...dolls within dolls within dolls?
I think it would be best for me to back off from this thread for about a week.
I haven't opened up a can of worms in my thinking... I've opened up a matryoshka full of worms, and I have some serious sorting to do. I WILL be back, God willing!
Love,
Steve
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