The Peace of God

It seemed so obvious, it was hardly mentioned until much later when outsiders were pressing in, trying to claim a piece of the action. Those outsiders had virtually none of the foundation, none of the essential background to get vary far with it. The biggest single problem was getting them to shift their basic understanding of reality, because what they had was all wrong, even if in varying flavors and degrees.
Hebrew Christians in Jerusalem understood instinctively. Despite three centuries of false intellectual assumptions from all their teachers, the old ways were not entirely forgotten. Those ways had simply been relegated to a minor partisan margin on the political landscape, the old and grouchy reactionaries. It was there in their consciousness, and it wasn’t a monumental task to bring them back because they were already disenfranchised from most of the benefits of the false ways of Hellenism. When Jesus came along and His miracles screamed so loudly how everyone else was clearly wrong, it wasn’t hard to listen, even if without full comprehension.
Those He chose as His closest associates, oddly, seemed to have the most trouble with it. That is, until that defining event which set the history of Christianity on fire — spiritual birth. The presence of that Other Intelligence in their souls made the path back to truth suddenly and painfully obvious, but also possible.
And while that same transformation was wide open to those who lacked that cultural and intellectual background, the implications and necessity of taking that path to ancient mystical understanding was hardly automatically understood. So while the Gospels and Acts hardly mention any manifestation of this really massive problem, we see hints of it in Paul’s letters as he confronts a serious barrier to these new Gentile believers making the transition to the mystical life Jesus taught.
That ancient mysticism understands instinctively there can be no such thing as perfection in the rational sense. That’s because the mystical instinct is to realize no human could possibly identify perfection in the first place. It’s a myth; it never existed outside the mistaken imagination of some terribly misguided humans. Even in pursuit of God’s favor and His Laws, there can be no such thing as precision and perfection. When you see the Hebrew concepts translated into English with the word “perfection” you have to understand that is merely a symbolic approximation of the original idea.
Nothing in this life can possibly be perfect because nothing on this plane of existence can be perfected. The root nature of our fallen existence is we cannot know perfection and cannot hope to find it on our level of understanding. It’s the wrong question. Rather, under God’s revelation we should understand our best hope is “good enough” — an estimated balancing point between competing demands which allows us to find God’s blessings. He does not hold us accountable in precision, but in desire.
It’s not as if you can’t progress when you try to account for feelings of regret, of missed opportunities. But you are damned wrong if you push your analysis of such things beyond the point of real and practical application as a mystic would define it. Critical to human progress in appropriating divine wisdom is the utter necessity of looking at things with painful results, examining them in retrospect. If you don’t sense the Holy Spirit prodding you to this sort of contemplative brooding over your failures and sins, you understand nothing; you are defying the way God works. Yes, ask the Lord to show you your sins as sin, and ask Him to show you what could have been done better.
But critical to this process is the realization you won’t ever get an answer carved in stone. Your own best understanding is supposed to drift over time as your base of experience and grasp of holiness expands in size and depth. It must of necessity remain flexible, or you block out God’s Spirit and your own progress.
This whole business of idolatry is itself a manifestation of the petulant human demand for simplicity and “perfection” which cannot ever be. Investing so much of your soul in mere symbols is the path to destruction. This is why God is insulted by the likes of legalism, the use of phrases such as “plenary verbal inspiration” and “propositional truth.” Those arise from a demand God scratch on stones, instead of working in our hearts in a vivid give and take love relationship. It becomes an excuse to worship the Bronze Serpent or any other symbol of faith.
The peace we seek as humans is simply not available. God’s peace with us is the assurance we are as close to Him personally as we are likely to get at any given time, in any given context. It’s not about objective things, but something indefinable between two persons.