What follows was yesterday’s message, but I just couldn’t quite get there until this morning.
This is one of those times when I cite my personal example, not as proof of some principle, but to indicate something you might explore for yourself. As always, you should never swallow my explanation of things; you should test those explanations against your own heart’s convictions.
The context of our human existence is in the hands of God. When you survey what you can see with your eyes, those things you didn’t put in place by your own hands, that context is from God. It’s the context in which He seeks to bring His glory into your life, and that glory can shine without your help, but He holds open the offer to include you in the blessings of His glory. His glory can bring warmth, enlightenment and healing, or we can exclude ourselves, but His glory will shine either way.
Most of us could probably look back over our lives and see plenty of times we definitely came up short of His glory. Those were times when we did things in the flesh — working from our own best reasoning of things — instead of letting the heart lead in faith. My life is full of some jagged moments that still rake across tender parts of my memory. That’s how we learn. These are the things that haunt our reveries and dreams to remind us that we already know how to approaching things badly, so we need to do something different the next time.
Dreams from your head are like that. Dreams from your heart tend to hit you like a vision from God, with an overwhelming moral clarity, but dreams that build on our memories are less obvious in their meaning. That’s when we turn to our hearts and pray God reveal to us what the message is. There’s no reason to imagine God doesn’t answer such prayers; it’s just a matter of spending time unlearning the stuff that hinders your grasp of the answers. If you invest yourself in pursuing a clarity of what your heart requires of you, it will most certainly bring more sorrow because you have to let some things go. Maybe not permanently, but you let it go at least until you know for certain what part it is supposed to play in your mission and calling.
Over the years I’ve been poking around this computer technology stuff. My first exposure back in the 1980s was enough for me to recognize that God wanted me involved in it. There were plenty of problems in my life that hindered some elements of that pursuit, but in the broad general sense, I knew that field of endeavor was critical to my mission in life. It’s not that I recommend it so much to others; I’m the first to tell you that if you don’t experience computer use as answering a real need in your life, then stay away from them. While computer technology isn’t the actual mission, it’s the path I must take to pursue my mission. This is how God wants me to do what I do.
Further, that path has increasingly led me through Open Source technology. Not in some pure devotion like a religious doctrine, but again, it’s the path I must take to get where God calls me. The problem is that in my past experiences, I did fall into treating it like an idol. I mistook the means of blessing for the blessing itself. Just like Israel in that area near Mount Hor (Numbers 21:4-9), I was plagued with stuff that could hurt me, but God’s solution was a symbol for the focus of saving faith, not enshrining the symbol in cultic idolatry (2 Kings 18:4, the Cult of Nehushtan). I still needed to use Linux and BSD, but not enshrine them in my religion.
So as you might imagine, my first few efforts to share my solution to computer challenges didn’t go over well. I was doing it in the flesh. Eventually I learned to back off until I got a better perspective. Breaking down the heathen altar was not so simple, and I kept going too far with various different solutions; polarization is a part of our fallen nature. I believe I’ve got it now, but as you might expect, some of the scars are still tender. I’m wary of making the same mistakes again.
Comes now a time of crisis in our world as God pours out His wrath on selected targets, and we have to ensure we understand the difference between moral issues and mere manifestations of them. Some people in this world have attempted to rebuild the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9), a false globalist doctrine to enslave all humanity under one elite group, pursuing something that cannot be. Human reason seeks the efficiency of centralization as the means to some mythological greatness. A critical element in God’s solution is decentralization, to give us all our own unique tongue, as it were, and dissolve the power of the Tower. As a manifestation of the Tower, I see a major problem with the centralization in commercial software. I am utterly convinced that a major element in God’s dispersal of the slaves is shifting to decentralized software, too.
Not everyone had to leave the Plains of Shinar where the Tower was built; we know that a significant population remained there after Nimrod’s cult fell apart. I’m not telling you that Windows or Mac represents the Tower itself, only a part of the system that supports it. You need not feel compelled to leave just because I’m helping others scatter. But I am most certainly called to encourage scattering for those who can receive that message. The problem is the centralization that enslaves us all and hinders our pursuit of the Creator’s glory. Your heart knows where you should build your individual witness. Somebody has to stick around to dismantle that Tower and put the resources to use elsewhere.
But I remain somewhat wary of how I might introduce folks to the option of leaving. Having failed so very often in the past, caution is simply natural. Last night I dreamed of failing at many things, to include reliving moments in my life when I failed at this or that. It wasn’t particularly painful like a nightmare, but it was poignant. By the time I awoke, I understood the message. Not that I can put it into words for you, but what matters is that I believe I know how to proceed. I have to let folks know they can leave Windows and it will be okay, because I did. Instead of inviting people to join my little cult so I can build another Tower of Babel, I’m inviting them to review their mind maps about the world and consider what freedom demands, and where they might seek God’s glory.
But I cannot set you free; I can only show you where the key is that unlocks the chains. Nor can I tell you where to go once you get the chains off.
