January 15, 2014

Déjà vu

We recorded the Denzel Washington movie Déjà vu on our cable box and the movie it true to its title because now it refuses to be deleted. Apparently it has taken up permanent residence on our movie list. As believers we also deal with a spiritual déjà vu of sorts. We have inactive sin issues sitting on the shelves of our minds and while we may not always be able to erase the identifying titles, we don’t have to replay them just because they are there. Paul addressed this struggle, “Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.” (Ro 8:5 NIV)

1 comment:

Steve Corey said...

Gail;

-----We live in a realm occupied by both good and evil. From the very core of existence - the spirituality of everything - where there are demons and angels about us as well as God within those who are His, to the very particulars of existence, where there are acts and actions and motions upon things and people and their placements and being, throughout each and every mind and emotion of all the souls, this is a place of good mixed with bad, evil and righteousness bundled, driving history down a path to the very point of God’s expression.
-----I love the Greek Atomists. They demonstrated the eyes to see which Jesus gives. Having no particle accelerators or neutron microscopes or other labs of gadgetries, they mentally sliced an apple half into a quarter into an eighth into a sixteenth etc., until they imagined the piece which would cease to be if it were sliced again. They called it an Atom and ascribed to it the fundamental properties of being very few in type, constant in being, and combinable in ways which make everything we touch and see. Thus, they demonstrated the finding of truths from well reasoned facts, and too, they demonstrated the approximations reasoned truths must be left within. Everything is a mixture of correct and incorrect, right and wrong.
-----It’s just the way we’ve been made for the place we were made in. And though Paul talks about putting off the old self, it doesn’t seem to completely come off. Though he talks about the death of the old man, the ol’ boy never quite dies. At least it doesn’t feel or look that way.
-----But that’s what Jesus’ eyes to see are for. God’s Word reveals enough facts to sprinkle around and to notice the patterns they make. He’s a God full of desires. And He made us full of desires, too. He never told us in His Word to stop desiring. That’s an error born of Eastern religiosophy. But His Word sure certainly tells us to desire righteousness, to love it, to long for it, to pant for it like a deer for water (of course, He is righteousness.) That desire is somehow a part of those eyes.
-----Let’s do an Atomist thing. Every situation can be cut in half - every thing of it can be sorted into a “this” or a “that”, every person of the situation, every thought of every person, every feeling, and every fact of his spiritual being can be sorted into “this’s” and “that’s”. Well, like the Atomists, you know you can only half the situation so far actually, and thereafter conceptually to its fundamental parts of correct and incorrect, good and bad, evil and righteous. Yet you know this level actually exists, because God sorts to it always. So you can set your desire upon the righteous particles even though you can only imagine their type. That makes kind of a rightward inclination towards the pieces of any situation you can know and sort, which gives you a bit of a boost towards adjusting whatever good you can into a situation at hand. It isn’t like you’re going to heal the world. It’s like your right inclining desire exposes what little you can do, which you do, then Jesus is the known responsibility for the rest, while always perceiving life as this writhing muddle of deeds and stories and movies which just won’t unspool until the day God separates every particle of evil for the place it chose, and of righteousness for the place of its desire. Since we’ve desired His desire, we’ll be good to go.


Love you all,
Steve Corey