A world turned upside down

I give you a personal testimony here. I believe that the bible offers us a blue print for the way we are to conduct ourselves , that is the way the world is to function in order for there to be the ultimate expression of freedom to ones neighbors, to ones treatment of all the things in his environment. I am saying this because man was given a glorious dispensation to rule over creation. The earth was made for man, but God rules the air and the heavens. The cross is how we experience this freedom to love that was extended to us as an example and to us as the ruling effect in us in acting toward one another in society. This world view is not without certain order in Gods divine election. I mean there is a great mystery that precedes this Utopian order. Every man desires to have perfect authority over creation. This is what God puts in the heart of man as man has a restless heart until His longing for eternal things is satisfied. So that the lack of this divine order frustrates the peaceful rule of Gods design for man.

One of the reasons i moved my family to the country was so that i could find an expression of this order. Its funny to me to be in a society where there are people who are always focused on the doing part and yet at the same time their teaching offers a blue print that falls short of the scriptural mandate to live in a society of this natural order that God has placed for man to be. Most men who are of the free will philosophy are more interested in creating an environment that placates something in between what is required and what is to be the goal. This is like living in a no win situation.

But I have prayed and longed for a society that worked according to the old boundaries of marriage and community. That is women staying at home and teaching the kids so that there was a philosophy of life in which the community had shared values. I think that women given to the natural role are the creators of this kind of connection. My kids were raised the old fashion way. So i am arguing that the blue print that God has set up in a very practical way has the best outcome when we have people of different orthodoxies living at peace with one another. Its impossible for men to generate this kind of peace. We were not made to be women. What i am saying is, that there is an undercurrent in our most orthodox churches of people who live in a society that has lost this other world so that we live in a dream world that is turned upside down so that the frustration level is equal to the depth of teaching and it is the nexus of a coldness that permeates the worship of Gods people. I do not think we can take these things litely.

We were warned in the late 60s and early 70s that our education of our children would have a dramatic effect on the level of worship and the kind of attendance to orthodox churches. Now we are 30 plus yrs later and we are seeing the effects of this strife that we face as a result of these things having to be a personal anxiety toward one another and the world. We are seeing love wax cold.

I raised my children in a community that was naturally given to peace. There was not much disunity among those who had different views of faith. I think we have this backwards today. We are more interested in orthodoxy than we are to reteach the divine order of creation. We love our orthodoxy in a very dysfunctional society. And that the dysfunction is not generally from how we were raised but by the kind of society we create in our families. I think we are dealing with living among scorpions and snakes in this kind of society.

A holy war

I believe that society is made up of men who seek power by control. And all idol worship has this threading environment. Otherwise the mindset of the kinds of hierarchy would be convincing one person who worships a different kind of god to agree with someone who is more powerful who worships at the altar of his particular god to be convinced that he is rite by a pragmatic paradigm. That is just foolish and separates passion and desire from the human experience. Because what ever people trust in carries the weight of love and hate. So that in the communities of these different paradigms of power struggle there is this environment of boundaries that have this threatening component. Such that Paul was preaching the gospel to people who made idols and who had the component of free market idealism. Take away their profits and you are immediately cast into a world of a war of words and systems of ideas that are structurally set for men to profit and control.

This is the nature of evil that exist in the world. We are involved in a holy war of what people trust in as what that kind of environment has as its norms in peoples minds. We see things that do not appear, we determine the abnormality of this intense hatred by being under the obligation to know and feel what is real in a world of the mixture of false assumptions that are under the surface as if we were in a war where pain was the means by which we are made to feel and act in a certain way. Yes, Christ does give us wisdom, not just in a war of the intellectual , but He has given us the power to determine for everyone, what is going to be the proper way of living in the world. In a sense , spiritually speaking, we are either crucified or we are a hermit. I hope that we are not the frog in the hot pan.

Whole counsel understanding

There is something we do in trying to explain these terms of how we view reality as if we are teaching ourselves through the teacher. Now i do not doubt that this is from a weak perspective of the importance of being without a specific application of truth to us without first applying ourselves to the general evangelical entire counsel application. There are these temptations to be under the allusion of being in a frame of understanding from this sensitivity in a legal sense in receiving a teaching to hear the voices that do not have their origins from grace. In a sense we are dumb sheep and we follow after some kind of frame of reference in which we have very little perspective , having been used to these short focuses in receiving the teaching under these different frames in our disposition.

This is not really the historical fashion of what is defined as being under the obligation to receive the teaching in a whole counsel fashion. If we just accept that the whole counsel is all that God requires, then i do not think under further observation of the historical teaching of the whole counsel that we have read from our fathers as if we have the whole understanding of what they were saying. It is the fashion to receive the word with much rejoicing because in the frame of receiving the word we are receiving it as having the nature of what the teaching is defining so that we are receiving it as if it was gifted to us by His grace. That is, there is a difference between receiving a teaching under the obligation of a legal spirit or nature, and receiving it under the nature of the spirit of grace. So that it would include this divine illumination or having a taste in a complete way of the eternal and invisible understanding of the wholeness of the teaching so that we are receiving it not in the letter but in the Spirit, written on our hearts as if it were with the full understanding as if it was related to the whole of scripture. Its more than just an application but it is a divine light to our understanding in a spiritual wholeness.

Whole counsel understanding

There is something we do in trying to explain these terms of how we view reality as if we are teaching ourselves through the teacher. Now i do not doubt that this is from a weak perspective of the importance of being without a specific application of truth to us without first applying ourselves to the general evangelical entire counsel application. There are these temptations to be under the allusion of being in a frame of understanding from this sensitivity in a legal sense in receiving a teaching to hear the voices that do not have their origins from grace. In a sense we are dumb sheep and we follow after some kind of frame of reference in which we have very little perspective , having been used to these short focuses in receiving the teaching under these different frames in our disposition.

This is not really the historical fashion of what is defined as being under the obligation to receive the teaching in a whole counsel fashion. If we just accept that the whole counsel is all that God requires, then i do not think under further observation of the historical teaching of the whole counsel that we have read from our fathers as if we have the whole understanding of what they were saying. It is the fashion to receive the word with much rejoicing because in the frame of receiving the word we are receiving it as having the nature of what the teaching is defining so that we are receiving it as if it was gifted to us by His grace. That is, there is a difference between receiving a teaching under the obligation of a legal spirit or nature, and receiving it under the nature of the spirit of grace. So that it would include this divine illumination or having a taste in a complete way of the eternal and invisible understanding of the wholeness of the teaching so that we are receiving it not in the letter but in the Spirit, written on our hearts as if it were with the full understanding as if it was related to the whole of scripture. Its more than just an application but it is a divine light to our understanding in a spiritual wholeness.

The effects of false teaching

Its interesting to have a reaction to the regulating of teaching. The moment that we say that the church is to be regulated by the word of God then there is a reaction to us being too dogmatic. And i know that you like certain teachers. So that you would defend that teacher because they have a certain appeal in their presentation. And there is some truth in saying that you dont agree with all of the persons teaching. And i am sure that there is a balance between the charisma of a person and the teaching. So that some people are attracted to a teacher not for some of the teaching but how a person is effected by that teaching. So that to focus on being dogmatic about the proper way to teach may be a form of legalism.

But every student of the word of God is faced with the danger of accepting something first in the understanding that is not accurate and then having a disposition formed by that understanding. We are not important in the sense of our personal likes and dislikes about what we think is the standard of truth. But at the same time it matters how we are treated as a student under the teacher. So we are important. But we need to see that there is a difference between the balance between how a certain teaching brings on the desired effect to bring on the proper choices, and the evidence of a life of holiness toward others. That is having faith and living it out. I am not sure this is a balance but there is a progression here. Since teaching is not just an intellectual effect , but it is of a spiritual nature. Since the effect of teaching in a spiritual sense is the cause of our choices, then we can say that bad teaching causes a spiritual sickness of the soul that will effect our living it out.So we are forced to be dogmatic so that we will have the full effects of the spiritual conversion in our desires in order to walk in a manner worthy, that is choosing what is best according to the nature of the dogmatic desire. Which is the strongest desire.

If we think that our choices determine our living it out before men, then there will be a mechanical element to our performance. It would be short sited to not acknowledge the powerful effects of all of the workings of the word of God and the Spirit of God in focusing on the origins by the willing effects in that conversion experience. To say that there is a balance between faith and works may be to avoid a dogma of acknowledging the effects of the means in coming to a proper choice. The dogma of this is that we are in a spiritual understanding of the frames of mind by the spiritual dogma according to the teaching. So that we know that the sickness of a person according to the teaching is a lack of understanding by the effects of the spiritual power in the desire. Thats why accurate teaching is of a nature of its own conversion effects on the soul. If we just focus on the balance between faith and works then we may be creating a mechanical faith.

The Arminians Machine-ology

Therefore persons cannot reasonably make this improvement of the doctrine of necessity, that they will go into a voluntary negligence of Means for their own happiness. For the principles they must go upon, in order to this, are inconsistent with their making any improvement at all of the doctrine: for to make some improvement of it, is to be influenced by it, to come to some voluntary conclusion, in regard to their own conduct, with some view or aim: but this, as has been shown, is inconsistent with the principles they pretend to act upon. In short, the principles are such as cannot he acted upon at all, or, in any respect, consistently. And, therefore, in every pretence of acting upon them, or making any improvement at all of them, there is a self-contradiction.

As to that objection against the doctrine, which I have endeavoured to prove, that it makes men no more than mere machines; I would say, that notwithstanding this doctrine, man is entirely, perfectly, and unspeakably different from a mere machine, in that he has reason and understanding, with a faculty of Will, and so is capable of volition and choice; in that his Will is guided by the dictates or views of his understanding; and in that his external actions and behaviour, and in many respects also his thoughts, and the exercises of his mind, are subject to his Will; so that he has liberty to act according to his choice, and do what he pleases; and by means of these things, is capable of moral habits and moral acts, such inclinations and actions as, according to the common sense of mankind, are worthy of praise, esteem, love, and reward; or, on the contrary, of disesteem, detestation, indignation, and punishment.

In these things is all the difference from mere machines, as to liberty and agency, that would be any perfection, dignity, or privilege, in any respect: all the difference that can be desired, and all that can be conceived of; and indeed all that the pretensions of the Arminians themselves come to, as they are forced often to explain themselves; though their explications overthrow and abolish the things asserted, and pretended to be explained. For they are forced to explain a self-determining power of Will, by a 69power in the soul, to determine as it chooses or wills; which comes to no more than this, that a man has a power of choosing, and, in many instances, can do as he chooses. Which is quite a different thing from that contradiction, his having power of choosing his first act of choice in the case. J Edwards

Divine illuminations

This truely is a place where there is a true sense of that intuitive spark of divine consciousness. And yet, every desire we have is of its own nature. Since we are made new by the Spirit, then there is no desire that we have that is not transferred by grace. I find in this life that my natural inclination is to become sullen by the weight of some kind of fallen spiritual paradigms with the thoughts of this earth and a conscious independence to rest in my own power. Its so subtle that it just creeps up on my spiritual awareness. But since there is a deep well of heart issues, those desires that we have for the eternal, then there is nothing that we can do to smother them completely. So that we are most miserable creatures under the burden of our sin and our lack of thankfulness. This comes in just resting from any struggle.
When we desire to have all of the blessings of the promises of God, then we are made to rejoice. But our understanding only comes by increasing these desires since what we desire is what is going to be done in the end. And since we have this inner world of acting, then we are living in the reality of His life in us when we are having the springs of His Holy Spirit increasing the life of Christ as a constant disposition of living in the eternal conscious communications of His revelation. We know this because we gain an understanding of the nature of these attributable paradigms that lighten the weight of this struggle in temptation and cause us to be raised up in our affections to spend our hours longing for eternal immunations of His love and faithfulness. If we have a taste of His goodness, then all is well with our souls. Oh that the Spirit would baptize us in the confidence and assurance of the reality of the glorious knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Oh that divine illumination that translates us into a hope that is sure and steadfast. We must get used to living with a level of eternal communications in the deep recesses of our souls. To hear when there is silence, to long for Him when there is only voices around us that are complaining, and to be enraptured in His eternal powerful resurrection calling that takes us out of this world so that we are lost in His wonder and praise. For when we have desires for His glory then we will experience the pleasure of having fellowship with His Spirit.