I picked up a 1 ½ inch
wood screw laying in the roadway, but it wasn’t just a screw…it was a flat tire
in the making. Things, as well as people, aren’t always what they seem. Spies went
to Jesus and tried to trap him with a question about paying taxes to Caesar,
but they failed because he saw through their duplicity. Unfortunately, some
believers also practice duplicity and they too are under the misguided
impression that no one can see their motives. Proverbs says, “The integrity of
the upright guides them, but the unfaithful are destroyed by their duplicity” (Proverbs
11:3 NIV).
3 comments:
Gail;
-----Duplicity is human nature. Interactions between the subconscious and the conscious involve duplicity even inside the individual. Memories get reshaped by it through belief conserving biases. The regeneration of the mind involves a development of new mental behaviors and habits which weaken its efficacy, but it is part of the flesh; it won’t die until we physically die.
-----Of course, on the other side of the mind, the side effected by the spirit rather than the five senses, regenerative effects work into the mind as well by the presence of the Holy Spirit. If it be the Lord’s purpose for an individual’s life, and I believe it has been by evidence of renewals such as David Wilkerson and even more so, St. Paul, the Holy Spirit will have His effect big and immediate. But most of us repentant sinners must slog through the mire on our way out of the swamp. We don’t get the kind of “free ride” into spiritual greatness Paul enjoyed. Yet…
-----Consciousness is much like your TV screen. The flat-screen is a collection of tens of thousands of tiny pixels. Each lights up for an instant with a particular color such that, in combination with all the other pixels, a recognizable image is delivered to the eyes. The image is recognizable only because the cones in the retina take a longer amount of time to respond to the stimulation from the lit pixels with their own signal to the brain than does each pixel stay lit. So also, the brain itself requires a certain amount of time to process the signal. Thus, the tens of thousands of individually, but not independently, flickering pixels are received by the brain as moving, recognizable images. But they really aren’t. They’re just twinkling pixels. Consciousness is the same twinkling of tens of thousands of neural networks in the brain. These twinklings are formulated within the immense arrays of neural networks interacting beyond our ability to discern. They are like the TV pixels, too small and too quickly blinky to be individually noted like the fleeting idea which flows in one frontal lobe and out the other of our consciousness is briefly noted.
------When we awake in the middle of a dream, we get a brief glimpse at the duplicity constantly churning in the blinkiness of our subconscious. Some dreams are wonderful. Others make us feel yucky, and make us wonder why we had them, although we clearly recognize certain elements of them as “acceptably me” amongst the other “unacceptably me“ ones. And don’t we often note one moment the bad habit by which we just embarrassed ourselves a moment ago (or am I alone a member of that club?) Our frames of mind and opinions about complicated matters whose facts and circumstances lie mostly outside our skillful knowledge base must change and shape as they move through the new impressions sparked by new information. The subconscious is as skilled in sheltering developing concepts from stiff-necked, core beliefs as it is in sheltering stiff-necked, core beliefs from new information. More inner duplicity. We are made of duplicity to the core. That is why I thank God so much for I Corinthians 3:12-15, and Romans 14:5-12.
(continued...)
(...continued)
-----“The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God; happy is he who has no reason to judge himself for what he approves.” (Rom 14:22) This verse is even a call to duplicity (how horrific that sounds!) My mother grew up in a Seventh Day Adventist family. I would no more sit down before them and eat a giant BBQ pork sandwich than I would not sit down and eat one with my Dad’s Baptist family (Dad‘s now a Campbellite, thank God.) (Oops! Was that a duplicitous interjection?) (I don’t know.) (I don’t care.)
-----I trust the Lord’s forgiveness for all my inner pixelation beyond my resolution to consciously control as well as that within my control which I don’t control carefully. Regeneration will be soaking into those pixels over time, and will be immediately interjected into them all at my body‘s death. But always, and especially more so as we grow up in the Lord unto understanding more fully than a few others do, we must become more and more careful to not harm others by what we more fully understand, like the pork sandwich thing. It is a duplicitness, for sure, but it is duplicitous for peace, “So do not let your good be spoken of as evil. For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit; he who thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men. Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding...Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for any one to make others fall by what he eats [does]” Rom 14:16-19,20b)
-----Then there is the other use of this human nature, the use which intends to take advantage by it rather than to give advantage. Most likely, that is the duplicity to which your blog of today speaks.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
(...continued)
-----“The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God; happy is he who has no reason to judge himself for what he approves.” (Rom 14:22) This verse is even a call to duplicity (how horrific that sounds!) My mother grew up in a Seventh Day Adventist family. I would no more sit down before them and eat a giant BBQ pork sandwich than I would not sit down and eat one with my Dad’s Baptist family (Dad‘s now a Campbellite, thank God.) (Oops! Was that a duplicitous interjection?) (I don’t know.) (I don’t care.)
-----I trust the Lord’s forgiveness for all my inner pixelation beyond my resolution to consciously control as well as that within my control which I don’t control carefully. Regeneration will be soaking into those pixels over time, and will be immediately interjected into them all at my body‘s death. But always, and especially more so as we grow up in the Lord unto understanding more fully than a few others do, we must become more and more careful to not harm others by what we more fully understand, like the pork sandwich thing. It is a duplicitness, for sure, but it is duplicitous for peace, “So do not let your good be spoken of as evil. For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit; he who thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men. Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding...Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for any one to make others fall by what he eats [does]” Rom 14:16-19,20b)
-----Then there is the other use of this human nature, the use which intends to take advantage by it rather than to give advantage. Most likely, that is the duplicity to which your blog of today speaks.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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