On Avoiding Too Much Confusion

May the reader please note that this article has not been publically preached, however it has been presented to My Friend's House Shelter residents, during the month of April, 2012. I guess it has been a while since I have written in this venue. So some catching up might be in order in the near future. Look for it! On Avoiding Too Much Confusion Not too long ago I experienced a dream. Now I dream, probably, every night but only occasionally wake to vivid remembrance. Some dreams that I remember are fuzzy and often the “punch line” is unclear. But this one was vivid and I think the message was clear as well. There is a kind of a building within a building, except the smaller inside structure does not have a roof or ceiling and one can somehow look down and see the people walking around inside. Another aspect is that one can be inside the enclosure and experience interesting phenomena. Entry is through a small crawl space or a very low door with some mirrors at different angles kind of like a fun-house at the carnival. Once inside, the exit is obscured. There is a kind of narrow shelf about waist high running the length of the walls. As one looks at the walls and the shelf, the patterns seem to change, like a kaleidoscope changes patterns as it is moved around. These changing patterns obscure the corners and, of course the doorway out. The object is obvious: find the way out. But this seems impossible since the patterns keep changing so as to obscure the corners and the door. So, one is in a constantly changing maize. Frustrating. Others are also in the room, trying to figure it out as well. Now, I get the message in my mind to close my eyes and use my hand to feel along the shelf. With the outside influences shut out, I now find the corners and the door. Obvious, how simple! Was this some kind of spiritual message from on high, maybe the result of prayer or just a result of some analytical thinking. I don’t know about you, but I like to think it was the prayer. When confusion begins to get the best of us, why not just shut down for a bit, eyes closed, mind in neutral, eliminate the noise of all those incoming signals and messages and influences and listen for that “still small voice” that He has promised lives inside. Soon the answer will be obvious. Pondering these things, there is yet another insight. Once driving in high country we decided to go on up the small mountain for the view. However, there was a weather disturbance in the area and driving up the narrow mountain road visibility became less and less and very quickly we were surrounded with cloud and could see neither to the right or left or ahead and even the road was quickly disappearing. I became increasingly uneasy and found a turnoff in the road and we wisely decided to turn around and forgo the sightseeing trip. Disorientation was beginning to take over my senses. As I think about this phenomenon along with the dream scenario described above, one point comes forth for me: a lack of reference. A judgment made out of thin air, pardon the pun, without any stable reference point may well be flawed. In the dream room with the constantly changing images, there was not a way, not a reference point. I could not understand where I was and therefore could not make any progress. But with eyes closed, and using my tactile sense, now there was a constant reference, the feel of the shelf to my hand and so I could make progress toward discovering the exit. On the mountain, the road was my reference, but was quickly fading and so we could have easily just driven over the side if the road disappeared from my vision and I went by feelings. Aircraft pilots and passengers have lost their lives when the horizon is obscured by clouds and the pilot compares what he thinks the attitude of his ship is with what he feels is straight and level, instruments not withstanding. In the aircraft the turn and bank indicator is referencing to the earth’s horizon, so it becomes the reference and shows the true attitude of the airplane, even if the earth’s horizon is obscured by clouds and not visible out the windshield. So, failure to trust this true reference may well lead to one’s destruction. Again, decisions made without a true, stable reference point with which to compare possible actions most likely will result in not reaching the desired goal and may well have other undesired consequences. The argument has been made, and continues in some circles to this day, that there really are no absolutes. In other words, there are no wrong answers so that whatever I come to believe is true for me. Truth in this case becomes relative to one’s cultural, religious or societal mindset and what is true and important for one may or may not be for another. So, the bottom line for this kind of reasoning is that my reference point is really myself and my own feelings, my own observations and ultimately my own conclusions. This is kind of like in my dream, the patterns keep changing, ever different, so my reference is fluid-like and my path of travel is back and forth, never arriving at the sought after exit. Oh, the exit may come albeit in the form of disaster instead of victory. Individuals with differing ideas, form groups and organizations and political entities and ideas tend to crystallize so as to become consensus dictating those behaviors that are acceptable and those that are unacceptable to the group, organization or political entity. If the root of these collective ideas is not a ground, something solid and unchanging, a set of principles firmly ingrained, then the reference will be fluid and ever changing to the whims of the strongest which will eventually become normal thought and behavior of the masses. At that point some very interesting things will eventually occur. I say interesting, but maybe different would be a better descriptor, depending on one’s length of experience within the culture. This may explain the youth/elderly dichotomy that seems to always exist in any culture. Differences tend to exist, not only between the old and the young, but between those who favor the status quo and those who want to see revolution. But even here, the kind of ground that serves as the foundation for these conflicting ideas becomes, I believe, the main determinant for how an individual sees himself/herself, whether liberal or conservative, whether wanting revolutionary outcomes or keeping change to a minimum. It then becomes obvious that the idea of there being no absolute right or wrong, no absolute “truth” that can always be relied on, no solid ground upon which to stand no matter the direction or intensity of the winds of human will and no ultimate authority, is fraught with pitfalls. There is ground. It has been there all along. We have revelation at our fingertips, and with today’s technology, just a keystroke away. We have the word of our creator. We have truth, absolute truth. It has been preserved down through the ages not only by a laborious process of hand copying and today electronically available, searchable by word or topic, but somehow, I believe, by the invisible hand of God. But to the modern mind the story of creation by infinite mind through a process of speaking things which were not into existence and of right (righteousness) and of wrong (sin) and of a savior and a cross and blood shed as payment somehow for the sins of mankind is preposterous. So, the 21st Century human being, having been brought up to have faith in empirical science, shies away from anything remotely spiritual and otherworldly—with perhaps the exception of playful ghosts and goblins at Halloween. And thus takes the word of God at arm’s length, picking and choosing if any acceptance at all, in other words, not seriously. And his defense is that everything is really about self and feelings and “there ain’t no heaven and there ain’t no hell” if I remember the line from a popular song from the seventies. These now prevailing attitudes in our world today have contributed among other things to a disintegration of traditional marriage, the weakening of the institution of the home and the secularization of the institution of the church. Today, concepts such as honesty and integrity are fading into the dim past. Sexual purity has become less and less important with terms like the “baby-daddy” and “live-in” and same-sex-marriage with a great divide in our world as to the propriety of negating the consequences of sexual activity by just aborting the natural result. Not that these behaviors haven’t always existed, but now they are commonplace and openly accepted, where once, at least, there was a certain amount of shame and social stigma attached to the behavior. So, if there is no real god and therefore no real hell and when we die, we die and that’s it. Or, if there is an afterlife, everybody gets a pass and there is no such thing as judgment. So, why worry about morals? Why put such restrictions on people? Just preach generalities and feel-good stuff. Steer carefully around those warnings of the prophets of old. Situationalize the teachings of Jesus, after all he lived back there in the dark ages long ago and we are now the enlightened ones. So if there are not really any actual and absolute prohibitions and restraints to human behavior, except those things we collectively decide to enforce, then the ultimate end will be anarchy resulting in the destruction of civilization. We can hire more police, field bigger and more powerful armies and build more prisons, but in the end even our agencies and institutions will collapse in upon themselves. I am convinced more and more that the driver of our present divide in our individual mindsets, in our religious attitudes and practices and even in our deadlocked government is this understanding of who we are, of whether it all just happened or is there something else, some force, some cosmic entity directing. Basically, does God exist, but does God not only exist, but does God really mean for us to adhere to the injunctions in His book that has been passed down to us through the ages? Or, further, must we take Him seriously as He says to Moses, “I am, that I am.” That must mean that there is none other but Jehovah God or Yahweh, depending on your translation. Jesus called Him Father and indicated that His followers might in fact, be spiritually born into the Father’s spiritual family. Wow, what a concept! However, if we are to believe in Him, and believe that He means what He says and expects us to succumb or be damned to hell forever and we don’t believe, then the word calls us sinners, and lawless, and disobedient and eternally lost. So it’s His way or the highway to destruction. Pretty narrow outlook! But it gets narrower. Jesus states that He is the way, the truth and the life and that He is the only way to the Father. Thus this eliminates Mohamed, Buda, Zoroaster and any number of other religious leaders and ideologies and religious beliefs. Looks to me like its Jesus, if one wants life. Of course the alternative would be what the word of God calls eternal death or hell. The word is pretty clear on that. Trouble is, folks don’t want to believe it. To believe is to surrender, to give up self and relinquish control. To believe is to allow the creator to make one into a new creature, a new creation, as the potter molds and shapes a lump of moist clay. To believe is to make Jesus Lord of one’s life. To believe is to give up selfishness and self-centeredness and find others more important. To believe is to learn to love like the Father loves, no matter what. To believe is to take up one’s cross and follow Him to Calvary to die to self and try to be like the apostle’s testimony, “not I that live, but Christ who lives in me.” And there is the ground, the reference point that never moves. It is that solid rock which is Jesus the Christ. And therein is the comfort and the peace and the glory of the Father God and the assurance of life, abundant and everlasting. © 2012, David R. Snow