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Laboring under the
burden of repressed shame following the Garden incident, mankind has
spent at least 6,000 years creating a god after its own image, while
struggling to come to grips with it's own sense of lost glory.
It is the story of children created to live in a environment of grace
and rest with their Parent, but who instead were deceived into
choosing a relationship based on knowledge and the performance
of it. Perfection began to
be conceived of in terms of external behaviors rather than internal
qualities such as sincerity, honesty, and openness.
Parental acceptance and love were perceived to be conditional on
this foundation. Our ground
of being was shaken to its core. This perception (which was a deception)
led to an unhealthy, toxic kind of shame, turning our hearts away from
their true glory to a sense of self-worthlessness.
This was followed by the creation of false selves that would
(supposedly) be more acceptable and loveable.
As a result, this false perception became a reality that has laid
the foundation for all our civilization's infrastructure, and led man to
commit every sin imaginable throughout the course of history.
A good example of this
can be seen through the motion picture movie, The Kid. It is a
modern day story of a man whose life experiences typify what has
occurred to humanity collectively from the very beginning of its
history. It shows how the innocence, sincerity, and openness of a
child can be turned to a shame that affects every aspect of life and
relationships with other human beings.
Joe, played by Bruce Willis in the movie, is quite a character.
He is self-absorbed and intolerant of other people in his life.
But the "fun"
starts as Joe begins the deep searching for his true heart.
In the movie, Joe is a man who, on his 40th birthday,
runs smack dab into his 10 year old self.
The young Joe is appalled by how he has turned out as the adult
played by Willis. He didn't
end up a pilot, doesn’t own a truck, and doesn't even have a dog.
He's not even married. None of the things he held dear as a
child. In his
disappointment, the ten year-old Joe declares, "I grow up a
loser!"
He is also a man who
can't cry and can't love. He
has turned within himself and has nothing of substance to offer any
of his relationships. Together,
the young and older Joe head off in search of how he ended up this way.
They finally discover the single event in
Joe's life as a young boy that altered his perception of himself and
others for the next 30 years.
It turns out that when
he was ten, besides having a history of being bullied by the other boys
in school, and belittled constantly by his father, that one day his
father berated his son for having gotten into a fight at school, causing
his sick mother to have to come down and get him. He was told in a
moment of anger by his father, "can't you see, your killing
her!". And when he began to cry (because he hadn't known that
his mother was dying of cancer previous to that moment), his father just
kept saying, "Stop crying, stop crying, and grow up", shaking
him by the shoulders and with a scowl on his face.
Certainly, Joe received many
wounds from his father, but this one was the defining moment.
He withdrew into himself and determined to "grow up", to never
cry again, to be strong so that his father would accept and love
him.
The really sad thing is, to one degree or another the story of
Joe's life is everybody's story. You start out okay, then receive a wound from your father,
mother, and/or others who are suppose to accept and love you, and this
results in a shame that drives the true you into hiding.
You are no longer accepted as you were created, so a false self
is created who will be. As you begin demanding love from others that you can't give
to yourself, you live life in a way that is a burden to you and everyone
around you. You really can't get
enough affirmation, and even what you do get you feel you need to fight
for, and all the while fear losing it. This
performance-based relationship approach between fathers and children,
and the shame it engenders, continues to be passed down from one
generation to another. It
started with Satan's deception of God's first children and has continued
down to the present evil generation. And
it encompasses the entire world we live in, all of society, all of
civilization as we know it. We're all just a bunch of posers
feeding off of everyone else's posing. Our religions, governments,
schools, economies, and all other systems and institutions are based on
the mentality of performance acceptance and the result of the shame it
engenders.
Remarkably, the search
for our Creator Father parallels the search for our true inner self.
It’s not finding a “god within yourself”, as some have
supposed. It’s realizing
that God created us to have a relationship with him from that true
child-like heart we’ve been hiding from.
God can only be glimpsed from where we are in our
captivity - in our dark place, because the Holy Spirit only works in us
when repentance and healing is pursued. As long as the
knowledge/performance environment continues to be preferred over the
grace/rest environment, the Holy Spirit cannot nurture us in that place
in our heart that needs healing. We will not be fully alive, and God will not become known to
us in the fuller sense that he wants to be.
St. Iraneus said,
"the glory of God is man fully alive."
Jesus said that he came that we might have life and have it
abundantly. That's not a
promise reserved for later, it's for now.
And you aren't fully alive if you are hiding and posing like Joe
in the movie. Jesus
came to do far, far more than forgive us of our sins, as important as
that is. He came to heal
the broken hearted and set the captives free.
Why? It is because
God's glory is realized in a man or woman when he or she is fully alive.
It is important to our Creator. When we lose our heart, the one
he gave us, we lose everything – our very glory.
Nevertheless, our God
has been at war for thousands of years against an enemy that does not
want him or us to have that glory.
The attack that started out so subtly in the Garden is now
reaching a frenzied state as Satan knows his time is short.
We simply must be aware of his tactics to take us out, and take
the time and effort necessary to get our hearts back.
The enemy is making his last-ditch effort to wipe out humanity
even while it still struggles to find and connect with it's Creator.
Have you seen the movie,
The Lord of the Rings.
It is, of course, a fiction story, but isn't it interesting that
even our own stories have plots that are parallel in many ways to
reality. There is a good God, there is a Savior who
comes to give us liberty, and there is an enemy who wants to wipe
mankind from existence. This
movie is a realistic and shocking depiction of what is going on in your
life and mine in the spiritual realm.
The battle is intense to the core - our very lives are at stake,
yet because the forces against us are invisible, we are far too
complacent about what we've been told in the Bible is happening all
around and to us.
The movie is fiction,
but what is happening all around us is REALITY. Jesus
said that he came to give us life to the full, but that the thief comes
to steal, kill and destroy. Why,
then, do we think that he never actually comes to KILL and
DESTROY!? Do we think that
God is responsible for the evil that befalls us; or that he allows it
and therefore somehow accepts it? Have we come to where we just
complacently and resignedly accept our lot in life?
"Well, that's just the way it goes.
God must want me to learn something from this, perhaps he even
promoted all these attacks against me.
I'm sure Jesus will fight my battles for me if I just accept his
purposes in my life." Brethren, Jesus called US into BATTLE. There is an enemy out there, and he's trying to take you
out! He knows what you
could be if you were to begin living the life you were meant to live,
and he fears that. The only
way you can begin to make sense of the things you continually find
yourself confronted with is to realize that it's not God, but Satan who
is warring against you. This is a real combat zone we've been born into!
It is a battle for our very heart.
One of the purposes for
the Kingdom Heart web page, is to declare that the revolving door of sin
through Parent/child relationships all began in the Garden, when Satan
deceived God's first children to abandon a grace-based relationship, for
a performance-based one. This
led them to be ashamed in the core of who they were, because knowledge
and its performance can never justify one to his Maker, and certainly
can never make a person whole. It
tears you apart and holds you captive to fear and sin.
Only through the true gospel of the kingdom that Jesus Christ brought, can
healing now begin. Once we
believe in it, and in what Jesus said he'd do for us both in this age
and the age to come, the Holy Spirit comes in to nurture a right belief
about oneself and a right relationship with our Father.
The main tension between
God and man is not sin, rebellion, or pride - it is this rest vs.
performance issue. Whichever
approach we decide to perceive and agree with, will determine, as it did
for our first parents, how we will live our lives with others.
Our behavior is absolutely the result of what we perceive
about ourselves in relation to our Father God.
A life of getting or giving is the result of either
performance or rest thinking. Our perceptions become reality, and we
bring everybody around us into it.
If we perceive our relationship with our Father/father is based
on rest, then we will be heading toward the righteousness of God in all
things. If we perceive our
relationship with our Father is based on knowledge and performance, then
we will be traveling headlong into increasing sin.
Of course, starting from
the right place doesn’t automatically mean that a person will
choose good and refuse evil. Life
still requires us to choose honesty and sincerity when it comes to
loving God. And it
certainly requires disciplines from God and ourselves.
However, the difference between being held captive and being free
is first dependent upon starting from the right place.
The gospel of the kingdom and the things concerning Jesus give us that
right starting place which will lead us into a God-inspired restoration
of our hearts. Perception becomes reality, and what we “see” (with
the eyes of our heart) is what we’ll get.
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