Locus Focus Hocus Pocus

(Posted early as tomorrow’s message.)

I’ve tried to warn my readers that we should study the Ancient Hebrew mindset as best we can, but never pretend it is necessary or even possible to duplicate it in ourselves. We do not ape the particulars. We do our best to awaken the moral and spiritual power within our own context, so the language of the Bible is advisory in that respect. As it is, we are reading an English rendering which might have passed through any number of layers from the originals, and we have no originals. We are accountable to the Bible, but we do not worship it. Instead, we have the Author and His unambiguous promise to guide and use us based on what we read there.

Nor is it possible to totally cease from every jot and tittle of our Western heritage. Again, it’s a matter of rightly dividing the Word as it applies in our discernment of Western influences. On the one hand, without the West we would not have computers and the Internet. Then again, without the West, we would not need them. We have the West and we have computers. The only righteous question is: What would Our Lord have us do right now?

I have often tried to explain that we can theoretically divide human nature into body, mind, and spirit. In practice, we can probably become aware of the soul as something far more than our minds, but have no direct awareness of the spirit. In broader terms, we can move the focus of our conscious awareness up out of the limits of the intellect. Thus, in recent months my mention of the sensory heart as part of the soul, part of our broader sense of who we are. Nonetheless, I still tend to describe the intellect as a tool for organizing and implementing the work of the flesh in obedience to the requirements discerned in the moral consciousness of the heart.

Sometimes, the flesh-mind simply cannot play along.

In clinical depression, the mind protests that it cannot embrace something demanded on some other level of the soul. If we give the focus of our awareness to the mind’s sense of failure, its sense of being overwhelmed and unable to keep up, we find ourselves deeply embedded in the misery of depression. The lack of a sensory heart gives rise to the standard cosmic numbness of clinical depression. If we possess a soul that is broader than the mind, we are at least in a position to draw back a bit from the crushing inertia and recognize: My flesh has run out of resources for this. It can’t go on any farther.

Despite the particular wording of some English translations, it is not a sin if your soul realizes your mind simply cannot believe God’s promises. Your flesh has limits and may need some space to heal from — well, only you would know that. But there’s nothing wrong with your higher awareness simply saying: “Fine. You can’t handle this. So stop; stop trying to plan and implement and just back off. Take a break.” And you can turn to face God and say, “Sorry Lord, but I just can’t believe that.” In that sense, “belief” is a cerebral exercise. So long as your intellect is not the limits of your consciousness, I assure you that God is not insulted by that. He knows all too well, given what His Son went through in the Garden of Gethsemane, and later on the Cross.

That’s not meant to shame anyone. We are fortunate if we can simply admit to ourselves that we hammered in His nails, in a certain sense. He did this for us because we could never do it for ourselves. That’s the whole point. When your faith rises above the cerebral, you realize that you aren’t required to make your head go along with things only your heart can comprehend. Do what you can to recognize the limits of your flesh and don’t tempt it beyond what it is able. Don’t lay that false guilt trip on your mind for its inability to keep up. By the same token, don’t let it interfere with the joys of your heart awakening to the cosmic sweetness of divine justice.

This is a long way from schizophrenia, where the mind itself is divided and confused, compartmentalized in dangerous ways. When you live in your heart, you remain quite cynical about your own mind, not to mention the flesh and its desires. The question is more the level and locus of your conscious awareness.