FIVE
What exactly is spiritual?
Weights and counterweights.
Most of us have seen the novelties that spin on department store shelves. They are like wheels within wheels, and they spin like gyros in several directions at once. They go on and on with seemingly impossible longevity. But, if just one weight is wrong or falls out of sync, the entire gizmo grinds to a halt. Our minds, with their concomitant emotional states, are like those novelties. We might also liken our minds to suns, (and this seems apt) with our emotions as orbiting planets, our affectations as orbiting moons, and our passions as meteors that swing by ever so often on their elliptical journeys.
The obvious part is that the sun’s gravitational force affects the paths of the planets. What isn’t as obvious to most is that the planets and moons, and even the meteors, exert an influence on the sun. Our minds affect our emotions, affectations, and passions. Likewise, our emotions, affectations, and passions influence our minds.
We have sorrow, but we would rather laugh. We have pain where we would rather feel nothing. We suffer the loss of loved ones. It seems like everything and everyone, except ourselves, is allowed to exert control over our lives. When we bemoan our woes, we like to ask, “why does God allow bad things to happen to good people?”
See the age-old complaint in Job 21:17, “God distributeth sorrows in His anger.”
And it’s all true; God allows bad things to happen to good people. But, here’s the kicker: many complainers are bad people who just claim to be good. To look past our noses, we must admit to a truth of broader scope: God allows bad things to happen to good people, good things to happen to good people, bad things to happen to bad people, and good things to happen to bad people. The old complaint is just so much sterile argument.
Recently, a mudslide in the Philippines killed nearly 2,000 people. Whether they were good or bad; whether they were Christian or non-Christian is pointless to debate. There were survivors. It now falls to them to make some sense of their losses. They will struggle; they will find a way to cope.
As I have said, a Godless mind will lead an individual to great pains; a ‘God-mind’ will lead an individual through great pains.
See why in Ecclesiastes 7:3, “Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart (the mind) is made better.”
Life’s hardships have, at least once, been referred to as the act of pruning a fruitless tree: a remedial act intended as an alternative to destruction. Mankind has often been referenced as a sort of crop that produces something of value to God. Sometimes we are sheep; sometimes we are fruit trees; sometimes we are clusters of grapes. As to the fecundity of grape clusters, that all depends on the vine. If we are sheep, the harvest is our wool: a thing we naturally produce. If we are trees that should bear fruit but do not, the owner has two choices. He can destroy the non-productive tree, or he can work with it in the attempt to turn things around.
So God prunes the tree - is there only one way to interpret being trimmed? No. But, many only see in a one-dimensional way: that is that God is allowing bad things to happen to good people.
Another interpretation is found in Deuteronomy 30:6, “The Lord thy God will circumcise (trim) thine heart (mind), and the heart (mind) of thy seed, to (so that you can) love the Lord thy God with all thine heart (mind), and with all thy soul (the mind of your angelic other), that thou mayest live.”
Yeah, we like to imagine it’s about us, but it’s not. God is working His own work, for His own purpose. As for us, we either will or will not allow ourselves to be brought into harmony with God’s plan. We are here to benefit God. If all He wants is my wool, that’s fine with me. If He likes my fruit so much that He prunes me to produce more of it, that’s cool. I am aware that those things in my life that are for my good, even answered prayers, are of more benefit to God.
See it for yourself in 1 Kings 9:3, “The Lord said unto him, I have heard thy prayer and thy supplication, that thou hast made before Me: I have hallowed this house, which thou hast built, to put My name there for ever; and Mine eyes and Mine heart (mind) shall be there perpetually.”
A spiritual being affecting corporeality for spiritual ends.
What would be the benefit achieved in 1 Kings 17:22? “The Lord heard the voice of Elijah; and the soul of the child came into him again, and he revived.”
Is it for the body alone, or might it also be for the soul?
God’s reasons are His own, His purposes spiritual. Remember ‘ingestion’? Remember the 'communicated nature of the communicator'? If you remember those pieces of the puzzle, then try
putting them together with the ‘fruit’ we are called on to bear.
Puzzle over Jeremiah 3:15, “I will give you pastors according to Mine heart (mind), which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding.”
You may ask, “Just what is God after?” If He has planted fields of wisdom, should it come as any surprise that wisdom is the harvest?
Glean Luke 16:8, “And the Lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.”
I have read somewhere that there are two ways to learn a thing. The first way to learn comes through being truly interested in the subject. The second way to learn is to have the material hammered into our thinking time after time after time. Most of us subscribe to the latter method. Such repetitions drive a nail home. So let me hammer you once more with the fact that spiritual and corporeal are not mutually exclusive. Receive the blow one more time that a spiritual God is realizing Himself into a corporeal host - you. Where do you look to find God?
1Corinthians 6:13, “Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body.”
I have stated that a man cannot teach what he has not learned. And, isn’t learning to receive the communications of one who communicates? What exactly is spiritual? By that question I mean, what exactly is spiritual from our perspective? God, a spiritual being, imparts spirituality into corporeal hosts. He communicates His nature, His mind, His will. If we can recognize any of that within ourselves, what we come to understand is exactly spiritual.
In passing the word ‘doctrine’ through the filter of a thesaurus, I found that every alternative word could be associated with the transmission and the reception of mentality.
What is Jesus really saying in John 7:14-17? “Now about the midst of the feast Jesus went up into the temple, and taught. And the Jews marvelled, saying, How knoweth this man letters, having never learned? Jesus answered them, and said, My doctrine is not Mine, but His that sent Me. If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of Myself.”
There has ever been a spiritual component to the sons of men. It is that spiritual side to us (our inner man) that runs afoul of the law. It is that part of us that chooses, rather than reacting instinctively, that leads us contrary to the utilitarian nature of God. If that were not so, we should be no more at fault than the lion that kills to eat. God communicates God to man; man, therefore, must, in turn, communicate God to man; that is man in the image of God. What happens if we turn away our faces, and communicate other matters? Communication of spirituality, or non-spirituality, is intrinsically linked to basic issues of mankind’s justification for continuance, to all issues of worth and judgment.
See just how closely communication is tied to judgment in Matthew 12:36, “But I say unto you, That every idle word (those things that we communicate) that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.”
If we stand in the image of God and communicate what we have learned, we communicate the nature of God. If we turn away our faces from the interface, the great reflection is lost. We, then, communicate everything but the nature of God.
See Mark 7:21-23, “For from within, out of the heart (the mind) of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: all these evil things come from within, and defile the man.”
As an experiment, assume that the mind of the man in the verse cited above has just been replaced by the God-mind. Go through the list and write down the opposite of each item. Then, read your list. You will note that the things of God, which have been imparted to the mind of the man, have replaced the old issues. If therefore, the mind of the man is identifiable by those things that issue forth from it, then the new issues from that same man would be the identifiers of whose mind? The brain has not changed; what has changed is the orientation, the perspective, the nature and quality of the mind within the brain.
When a farmer goes into the field, digs out all the old beans and re-plants with corn, it is no longer a field of beans. Even though the field of beans and the field of corn are both ‘fields’, something wholly different now issues from that new field. My simple illustration deals with a basic principle: something must be removed for something to be added. It is the principle of ‘displacement’. In construction, we see that never is a new building built on the lot of an older building until the older building has been removed.
See Deuteronomy 10:16, “Circumcise (remove) therefore the (old and unnecessary) foreskin of your heart (mind), and be no more stiffnecked.”
God has called for a new mind in man; it has long been the work of the Lord to cut away the old and create the new.
See also 2 Chronicles 16:9, “For the eyes of the (spiritual) Lord run to and fro throughout the whole (corporeal) earth, to shew Himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart (mind) is (made) perfect toward Him.”
Our next reference shows God being strong on the behalf of one whose mind has been made perfect toward God. The individual is described with certain attributes that elicit a favorable response from God. In other words, God proposes to both deliver and honor the individual as a result of those things we see in the verse that identify the nature of the individual.
See Psalms 91:14, “Because he hath set his love upon Me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known My name.”
So, what are those things that describe this individual? I like to view these not so much as mere actions, but as states of being. These identifiers constitute such states of being that God responds favorably. Remember, it is a spiritual God working His own work for His own reasons. By that, I am suggesting that there is a ‘resonance’ between God and the individual because of such states of being. We may assume that these states were not always in place: the end of a journey is an attained state that is reached through the journey. In the scripture, two reasons are given for the response of God; I begin with the latter.
To know God’s name.
It is an attained state. Knowledge is the attained state of having learned; having sought out. Now, of course, to know the name of God involves something more substantial than a merely vocalized sound or written figure. To learn the name of God is to know His very nature. Hebrew names run along those lines: the names ascribed to God reference, in every case, who He is and what He is all about. To have the name or nature of God imparted is to receive from the communicator the communicated mind.
Therein lies the resonance. One does not learn in a stasis; the process is active. If one has not subscribed to the ‘hammer it in’ method, then he has subscribed to the ‘truly interested’ method of learning.
The former reason, which is given in the above-cited scripture, for the response of God is: “He hath set his love upon Me.” The individual was truly interested, to the point where his primary focus was ‘set’ on the mind of God: he was a seeker. Of course, in all, I am still dealing with cognition and mentality.
See Psalms 119:104, “Through Thy precepts I get understanding: therefore I hate every false way.”
In speaking of spiritually inclined people and spiritual lifestyles, we always return to cognitive abilities - in this verse, ‘understanding’. Understanding is a spiritual quality of the mind of God. It is a constituent component of the nature of the communicator. What we see in such an addition is a ‘life-changing’ mindset. The tenets of God’s will: the addition of a godly focus leads the individual to an attained state of understanding. Understanding leads to an inclination against falsity, and thus, by extension, to a personal quest for verity; for every good and honest thing.
The God-mind in man is the realization of God in man. More and more, the seeker’s mind is God. Even so, one must remain vigilant not to misuse the gift. One must not, for instance, be an Ananias.
Good advice about one’s attitude toward one’s new mind is found in Ecclesiastes 5:2, “Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart (mind) be hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven (over all; the roof), and thou upon earth (like a chair in one small room): therefore let thy words be few.”
This is excellent prayer advice: preachers beware! Long-winded people may not be winning God’s favor. Less is more.
In the issue of ‘resonance’, one either has or is attaining the God-mind, or one is just not resonating with the Lord.
See the ‘un-mind’ in Isaiah 5:13, “Therefore My people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge.”
We need to ask, why does a parent refuse to give the answer to a child’s homework question? Why does a teacher make the student work a math problem without a calculator? The answer is simple: the easy way is not the way to go. What good would there be in a man learning the moves of Kung Fu without the discipline? What good would come from giving the power to wield nuclear weapons to primitive warring cultures?
Sure: God could just hand us all the answers - but, what would happen? The critical would still criticize; the scoffers would go on scoffing; the unbelievers would not become seekers. The attained state of knowledge may only be realized after man has learned all the hard lessons.
Matthew 13:13, “Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.”
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