March 20, 2013
Antibodies
A couple months ago I was left with lingering fatigue after being housebound
for a week with the worst sore throat I’ve ever had in my life. At the very least I know I’ve built up
antibodies against that particular bug, and if by chance we meet again at least
it won’t have the same debilitating effect as the first time. I’m wondering if
something similar doesn’t take place with the spiritual viruses residing in our
world. Not that we become immune to attack, but that we build up a certain amount
of resistance. “This is how you can
recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ
has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge
Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have
heard is coming and even now is already in the world.” (1 John 4:2-3 NIV)
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----I’ve told you enough about how I overcame my bipolar disorder in my twenties - truth filter, five year plan, etc. I was confident it would work when I began, first, because I had to be, and more importantly, because I was looking to the Lord for His helping part. But, by the time I was finished, I was amazed at what I had learned. You are entirely correct, something similar to the immune system’s learning the viruses as it meets them does happen in the heart and mind. It is a lot more subtle, a lot more complicated, but just as effective in dismantling the structures of cognitive and emotional error and restricting their passages to further error and even to deleterious spiritual activity. As a result of continued meditation and study and observation for decades about the subtleties of deceit and truth and their inner-personal and outward social effects, I am beginning to see at least a somewhat plausible theory emerge regarding the interactions between the spiritual and material worlds.
-----There is a lot more to acknowledging Jesus than admitting a name. On the other hand, maybe “admitting a name” is a good door to open. Even though we, highly scientific, logical and reasoning Westerner’s tend to pick names for many reasons as trite as how they phonetically sound, there is yet a slight flavor of meaning remaining in most of our choices. Many eco-minded types are naming their kids Sky, Cloud, and such, while others throw as much meaning into it as my friends who named their son Godivagifta.
-----To the ancients, names meant character. The fundamental character of Jesus was truth, the way, that is. The life. The more you search for the truth in every facet of your life affairs, the more you walk into Him. Since He is the truth, any spirit acknowledging Him must also acknowledge the truth. Truth is the tie. It has awareness.
-----Deceit, on the other hand, does not have awareness. It has pragmatic drift, purposeful wandering. And what could be the purpose of its wandering? Escape from the truth, quite simply. Thus, you can see in all the calls made by humanism for freedom in the last century a scintillation constantly common to every one of their wide variety. From the demands for religious diversity (exclusive of Judeo-Christianity), normalization of homosexuality, detachment of sexuality from marriage, equivalency of the sexes, credos of subjective reality, right on down to its contradictory practices of censorship, a distancing from anything Biblical is empirically evident in them all. This is not surprising. The Bible is the truth.
-----As a mind becomes more constructed of the truth, it becomes more immoveable against drift and better attuned to certain processes, not because it has become sure of the truth, but because the truth has become sure of it. This is partly what I mean by truth having awareness. Mental and emotional processes emerging from accumulating truth are themselves further refined towards the discovery of yet more truth. The deeper into truth the mind builds, the more in focus with truth’s purposes it becomes. Then, functioning in processes for purposes congruent with those of the Spirit of truth, interaction with that Spirit becomes yet more actual. As the truth itself becomes more the criteria for mental and emotional acceptance of thoughts and feelings and ideas, drift and wandering, the substances of deceit, grow more distasteful to the soul, withering all avenues traversed by sinister spiritual elements.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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