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Bens Blog
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Written by Ben Wolf
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Sunday, 27 January 2008 19:00 |
January 28, 2009...okay, so I didn't actually start this until the morning of the 28th. It's this week's thing, though, so, yeah. YES. Ahem
Well, there seems to be some kind of built in mechanism on the healthy functioning human model type example that can detect whether a person is well intentioned towards them or not, and every now and again, it does fail in certain instances, one of mine coming at the crucial time of first being launched out to lead my life independently at the tender age of 18. Through a combination of being innately teachable and loyal, character qualities that had not been instilled in me until only over the course of the preceding year and some months of my life, I got sucked into the wrong thing and ended up believing that, not only was God not actually in me and with me and for me, but that he was harsh and callous, and had a nature that put judgment in a position quite superior to mercy, contrary to scripture.
When I came to terms with the inescapable fact that I could no longer live in a world where this was so, I was incapable of believing anything else. My hard disk had been formatted and loaded back up with a bad trip for an operating system, and I was now existing with a head full of stuff I just couldn't take anymore. The channels of my brain that allowed access to the regions of it that registered peace, joy, everything pleasant, comforting, consoling, etc, had been cauterized. I could only perceive impending judgment and subsequent damnation to an eternity in unbearable pain.
How's that for a bad trip? I mean this was BAD, man...I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. This lasted about 5 months, near the end of which I wound up drinking copious amounts of 151 and continuously disassembled, reassembled, loaded and unloaded my pistols.
Yes, I agree, people that disturbed should not have firearms, but I did, you see, because I was shunned as a liberal and a fool when I became visibly uncomfortable once the leadership of the group I had been a part of began collecting them, and I was, of course, terrified of being rejected, as we all were...I was psychologically incapable of seeking out a job (we had been taught that if you worked for a job, you were in bondage, in Egypt, and that if you just "walked out on the water," God would miraculously get the money that you needed to live to you. Walking out on the water was never really defined. It was implied that if you didn't just know what it meant, you weren't really God's, and was, in retrospect an obvious brainwashing tactic to scare us away from attachment to and dependence on anything outside the group) and so I did some temp stuff for awhile, found a job at a coffee shop, which I lost after a couple of months, more because the manager was scared of me than anything else (I think that I would have thought that I was scary then, too); then something changed dramatically over the course of just a few days.
I had gotten into a confrontation with a pastor over some things I had done wrong (there's some things I'm leaving out, kids, sorry; suffice it to say that I was dangerously out of touch with reality and a danger to myself and everyone else around me) and I was more angry and confused than ever.
"This is just the same old thing, I'm being beaten down, controlled...what's the point? God's obviously done with me," I thought. I wanted to jump off a building, but instead, for some reason, I picked up a Bible and a commentary, and read Romans 7  . When I got to chapter 8, and read the first line, it was like the universe suddenly opened up.
There seemed to have been this thick, black layer of impenetrable substance that was suddenly gone, and I had not even known that it had been there until then.
At once, for the first time ever, nearly seven years after stumbling into Christianity as a teenager, I knew in my heart and had assurance directly from God that my sin had been paid for and that He was for me, not against me. People had told me this, and "prophesied" this to me (that's where somebody says stuff to you that they're perceiving the Spirit of God wanting to say to you), but it would constantly be uprooted and discarded by my giving heed to the convictions voiced by another segment of persons who ascribed to the belief that Christ's work on the cross had not sealed the deal, and was only a type and example of what we each as individuals must achieve in order to be made right with God; in this reality, there could be no atonement unless the individual "obeyed" God.
This obedience was never defined the same way by any two groups of believers; its nature depended on the individual sentiments and perceptions of the body of people presenting it, a dead giveaway that I just never picked up on. Where I had been at, the stigma with having a J-O-B, and the walking on the water thing that I mentioned earlier were a big part of this obedience. Also, if the leader called you up and told you that you had to come to a meeting tonight, and asked you to bring him something that he wanted, like some kind of food or a drink or something, your successful completion of these tasks were part of what you needed to do in order to stay on the right path.
Yes, it was that weird. [Man, it's embarrassing admitting that I got snowed into this, but I know that there are a lot of other people out there going through the same thing as I write this, and I just feel like it could help someone to hear some of what I learned through my experiences.]
Now I knew from personal, first hand testimony that the truth of the matter was that the obedience teachings had not been based on faith or piety or any of that; they had been about power. Now, someone is going to complain that I'm making it sound like there's no such thing as legitimate obedience to God, and I'm not at all. I am saying that if one person says to another, "The sacrifice of Christ is not sufficient to pay for your sin: you have to do something else in order to make it apply to you. You have to earn access to Christ," then that's wrong.
God loves obedience, but the forgiveness of your sin is not a proverbial dangling carrot.
I believe that the only thing a person is capable of doing in order to "obey God" is to yield over to the divine nature inside of them. We get to co-operate with God. To look at it from the perspective of I-have-to-do-this-or-else is to completely miss the point.
It's like trying to walk around the entire globe in order to get to the other side of the room. It's worse than that. It's really bad.
John and Jesus were really tight. They're supposed to have been BFF or something, so I guess out of all the stuff that any of those guys wrote, his stuff could be considered closest in pitch and harmony with the red letter. Just a thought.
Anyway, John was the dude who wrote "God is love." Now, here is the basic thing: if you don't know what love is, you are going to have a really hard time understanding God.
A lot of us grow severely out of touch with what love is as we go through different things in life.
Some people lose it entirely and come up with altogether bizarre versions of what it is. I believe the basic cause of this is abuse. We are programmed to know what love is when we are very young, by being loved, held by a parent, treated kindly and gently, and allowed to grow.
Experts will say that the ideas and attitudes of the parent(s) are instilled the child during the first four years of life, regardless of the degree of effort expended towards doing so; nothing needs to be explained or hashed out, the kid just literally absorbs these things from their environment. The tone of voice, gestures, and all of those types of things convey enough information in and of themselves. This puts many at a severe handicap, as there are a lot of households where things like strife, resentments, irritability, violence, and abuse are everyday elements in the atmosphere.
Some kids are so neglected or abused, or are witness to such atrocities that they become completely without a sense of what real love is. Connecting with God becomes a real problem for these people, of which I happen to be have been one (I got better).
More on that later...
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