As Christian Mystics, our devotion to divine revelation is absolute, as is our cynicism about humanity. Nothing, nothing, nothing man cooks up without revelation will ever work.
The fleshly nature cannot look in the mirror. While flesh can see that things are broken, the solution is always external. Flesh blames anything and everything but itself. Even when flesh learns the rhetoric of “it starts with the man in the mirror” it’s just an excuse to drag everyone else into the solution that man-in-the-mirror sees. Flesh hates being told that it is fallen, that its reason is untrustworthy.
It’s not a question of whether revelation makes sense to us; it is our obligation to conform ourselves to its logic. There is a logic there, but our fallen human intellect rejects it. So we must force it upon our minds from a higher place. The intellect is capable of absorbing and obeying, but has no desire to do so. We drag it around while it complains about everything, always looking for every excuse to resist. Our heart knows beyond all doubt what is in our best interest, but our carnal nature is forever ungrateful.
That’s reality; that’s what revelation tells us. Further, revelation warns us that so long as we inhabit our fleshly form, there is no real hope for returning to Eden. The flesh longs to return to Eden, but tries every way but the one that is open. The only in is approaching the gate of the Flaming Sword, and that in itself is impossible for the fleshly nature. It must be driven there by a higher power, a miracle of communion with the Almighty, whose authority over our fleshly nature is absolute. He alone can grant that first step, and every subsequent step on the Path to Eden.
So the path back to Eden is called Biblical Law. You and I know that fallen mankind has fought mightily to force all kinds of garbage back into revelation. They succeed at twisting the text, but not the divine moral character behind the text. Once we reconnect with the Source of the written revelation, it’s rather like having the chef himself instead of the cookbook he wrote. What you can make in the kitchen with the chef will be quite different than you could with the cookbook alone. His recipes will never fully express his personal knowledge, and his creativity will take directions and reach distances you could never put into any book.
But even Our Lord’s written Word clearly assumes that the only way to have peace with Him is to normalize conflict among humans. Not the things for which they strive, but we must normalize the very fact of human conflict. But it’s not just a matter of letting loose the dogs of war and chaos. It’s a matter of learning the structure under which the inevitable conflict should take place. That structure is ANE feudalism. The moral truth of this is so powerful that, in order to stay on the Path to Eden, you and I must engage in ANE feudal behavior in defiance of all human authority.
Granted, there are a whole range of tactical choices we will make with the guidance of the Spirit while we are on the ground of action, but the strategy remains eternally the same. The only hope we have for moving father along the Path to Eden is pursuing that strategy within any given context. You are born equipped with certain talents and a divine calling, and it must inevitably be an enlistment in the Army of God. That means signing onto the covenant of adoption as Family of God. It’s eternal and feudal from the very start.
And most of your service will amount to sabotage of human plans that ignore revelation. That’s the strategy. In order to assert the proper divine order of things in Biblical Law, we have to show His power to elude human control. In everything you do, your tactics will aim at making it obvious the human system is inferior by obeying His system.
Only God can tell you what part you play in His tactical and strategic plans. Try to remember: For every soldier out there on the front lines, there are several more back in the rear making frontline combat possible. All of it matters; every assigned specialty is critical. And it may be some long hard labor in His uniform, and most of you won’t receive much notice for long periods of time. Don’t be deceived by that. Whatever your mission, it’s critical to the war effort.
Still, everyone must be prepared at times to do combat. Our way of war is simply asserting by our actions and words what God says. In the face of human pressure to do things the wrong way, we must assertively say and do it God’s way. God will assign your objective; it may not make sense to you, but it does to Him. Your flesh will fight to mislead you into things that it would prefer, either in open defiance, or in a more subtle misguidance into something God has called someone else to do. Anything at all to avoid what God says to you individually, that’s what the fleshly nature will do. However, if you fail to assert His authority in the one place He calls you to, you will have failed your mission.
For most of us, we play along with human systems. We infiltrate. But at those critical moments, we manifest divine authority, knowing it means defiance of the human system. Most often, it will be just a matter of saying something in those critical moments, something that will awaken an awareness in others. Then again, there’s a lot of ways to “say” things. Know your calling and mission.
Don’t be shocked, don’t reject a brother or sister whose mission rips across the human fabric. Some of us are called to make big trouble for the human system. Sometimes the trouble we make in His name will affect what you believe is your own calling. Don’t confuse your mission with your human occupation. Your ability to stay focused on the strategy is what sets you apart from the mass of humanity that has no moral strategy at all.
Again: Find yourself in the bigger picture of what God is doing. That’s your duty; this is spiritual warfare.
