You should not imagine I hold something so incredibly rare and esoteric, as if it weren’t the same gift God offers to everyone. This same peace, sense of purpose and limitless confidence is just the standard results of surrendering to Christ. But this is not a cerebral religion, not about theology or the discipline of reason. Genuine faith is utterly unreasonable.
People have done some of the most incredible, and despicable, things with the human mind. Scientific research indicates a horrifying array of manipulations possible. Because of this, we have seen some truly insidious stuff promoted as religion because of the ability to persuade people, particularly through a talent some people hold. They use charisma as a bludgeon to subject people under their personal sway.
One of the nicest things about a virtual parish like ours is that it’s simply not possible. Whether I have any charisma is immaterial on this blog. All I have is a facility with written English. While it is possible to exert some manipulation through writing, it is exceedingly difficult and requires more talent than I could muster. It requires setting verbal traps for known weaknesses and waiting for a certain number to fall into them. It also requires a range of assumptions I reject openly. I am at pains to make my readers step outside of that level of consciousness. Instead of leading you along with stirring images of human emotion with a focus on me, I do my best to expose those things as the threats. I’m striving to disarm the Devil and his minions, not adopt his tools.
You cannot use the mind to program the heart. You can darken your heart so that it doesn’t shine the light, and you can constrict it and cripple it so that you form bond with evil. Or you can set it free to serve as the output for the Spirit-spirit communion. When the mind stops trying to rule the heart and reverses the roles, so that the heart rules the mind, everything changes.
In our most recent study in Psalms, David shows a complete transparency before God. If all you have are Western mythologies about human nature, you’ll see it as arrogance. It’s the same drill we experienced walking through Job. If your hands are clean, you are can’t lie about it. You have to dismiss the false dichotomy of Western assumptions that teach us there is no moral fabric in the universe. A Western man is either a hero because he makes up his own morals, or he’s a guilty wretch always fearful of the Fates. Such is one of Satan’s favorite lies.
It’s a lot of work pushing all the crap aside. That’s why I make so much of comparative civilizations and chatter at length about epistemology and the different types of logic. It’s the reason I gin up terms like “quantum reasoning” and “quantum morality.” I’m trying to bring all that substrate of deception out into the light. I want you to see what has been done to you. When you know what poison smells like, you can avoid consuming it. But it’s not something most of us can do in just a few days.
But there’s no other way to bring you into your divine inheritance on this earth. This is the best I can offer you. If you can learn to eat fear and trust in God, then the sun, moon and stars will shift in the heavens for you. They are no longer confined to their physical existence as conglomerations of particles and energy, but they take on a moral significance imbued by the Creator. Like David, you aren’t afraid to have that Sword of the Spirit pointed at your heart, but you are eager to be impaled so that sin can be sliced out of your soul.
Fear is the lie from Satan. When you embrace the moral righteousness of God, Satan loses his grip on you, and your fear dies. It has nothing in you to feed on, so it fades into an empty husk, a diaphanous and brittle shell of its former self. You see the light of truth shining through it. You’ll see it as it happens in your soul. There will be moments when you’ll look back at the wreckage you’ve left behind and see that there really is something ahead of you.
You’ll want to worship; you’ll wake up eager to call on the Lord. You’ll know you belong in His Presence. You’ll be philosophical about your earthly losses and wait on God to provide something more fitting to His calling on your life. Don’t be shocked when moments of madness sweep over you; it’s just the demon’s last scream in your ears before losing his grip. The strongest symptom is when your mind reports it is ready to obey, to serve and not rule. This is the inheritance of God’s children. Even if all you know is His Laws, it’s part of the package of embracing obedience. It was there long before Christ walked this earth; He just made it more painfully obvious so everyone could have it.
This moral power only seems so rare and precious because it’s so alien to our perverted world.