enough??

It occurs to me that even great writers, even perfect books, like the Bible, have been misquoted, misunderstood, and taken out of context, therefore it should not surprise me to find that my own writing is being misunderstood. It occurs to me that people may be reading only one or two entries of mine, and drawing conclusions that they likely wouldn’t draw if they had read every entry from the start of my blog. I am painfully aware of the limitations of the written word, which lacks tone of voice, expressions on the face, verbal interaction from the hearer, dialog. What I write with the utmost sincerity, with compassion, with love, can be read completely differently.

I recently read a book that I thought was wonderful, so informative, so hands-on, so exactly what I was trying to learn. Someone asked me what I’d been learning, what was getting me excited. Of course, I told him all the stuff I had learned from this book, which was basically just confirming, clarifying, and practical-izing (is that a word??), something I’d already been learning from the Spirit and the Word. He said he’d like to read it, so I leant it to him. What he read was completely different, somehow. It wasn’t at all encouraging to him.

People often say “Jesus is the answer!” to which other people reply…”What was the question??” I think that this applies here. If you, deep down in your heart are not asking the same questions as I am, then the answers will seem irrelevant. The reason the book was so exciting for me is because I’d been asking exactly those questions that the author was responding to. The reason my friend wanted the book (I think) is cause I was so jacked up about it, but when he actually started reading it he went “you know what…right now, I just don’t care about this, ….this is not the question I’m asking right now.” This is perfectly OK. Everyone is asking different questions at different times. It’s cool when people are asking the same questions as me, cause then we can dialog. We can learn from each other. The fact that you are not asking this particular question right now, and that you don’t care about the answer, though, does not make the answer wrong. Jesus IS the answer, no matter what the question, even if you don’t care. Do you get what I’m saying?? I’m not sure I get what I’m saying…

I’ve been getting a certain amount of response to my writing saying that I am writing about having ENOUGH faith. If this is what I’ve been writing about, then I have been misrepresenting my own beliefs. I think if you went back through my archives and read every post, you would not find the words ENOUGH faith, or MORE faith anywhere in it. If it’s there, I should recant it. What I HAVE said, over and over again, is that we need to have faith in what is TRUE. I like the saying that “Jesus is the TRUTH and everything else is not the TRUTH.” All I know is that there is an awful lot of ‘not the TRUTH’ that I have bought into in my life time. There are ‘not the TRUTH’ things that nearly every person I knew believed at one time, such as….”you can lose your salvation at the drop of a hat” type beliefs. TRUE?? No. Widely believed?? Yes. Did I feel like I was going against the flow when I started to believe differently? Absolutely! Was it worth it?? Definitely.

If I was a student in a school, studying psychology (which I may end up doing some day….) I would almost certainly take a few classes on ‘post-modernism’, the study of widely held patterns of thinking. At least I think that’s what it is…? Not that every individual in a large populous believes exactly the same thing…but that, on the whole, most people believe or feel ‘this way’ about ‘this thing’. For example…centuries ago they used to hold ‘witch hunts’ and execute anyone even suspected of being a witch. Today (or at least a few years ago) the popular sentiment is that a witch is a cute little girl dressed up in a pointy black hat and pasting fake warts on her nose…, or a funny little cartoon character who rides around on broom sticks. A radical shift in popular belief. Another example: divorcee’s. It used to be widely acceptable to completely shun, look down the nose at, gossip about, and regard as filthy, a woman who was divorced. Now, at least in our culture, most (not all, unfortunately) people see divorcee’s as deeply wounded individuals in need of our love and our compassion, or at the very least, as the woman next door, and next, next door, not all that different from me.

These widely held beliefs (or patterns of thought) are constantly shifting. What I thought once, I don’t think any longer. I have changed my thinking. The Bible word for changing my thinking is called repentance. Repentance may bring with it a certain sense of remorse for what I thought and did in the past, or what I missed out on, but what Biblical repentance always brings about is Freedom. Bringing my thoughts into line with the TRUTH brings freedom. Paul tells me not to conform to the pattern (of thought?) of this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of my mind. He tells me to take captive every thought and make it obedient to the KNOWLEDGE of CHRIST. CHRIST is the TRUTH, and the TRUTH sets me free. Faith does not set me free…TRUTH does, by faith.

I believe that our (widely accepted) beliefs about healing are heavily influenced by the ‘pattern (of thought) of this world’. I believe that we do not make every thought - with regard to healing - obedient to the KNOWLEDGE of CHRIST. I believe that our experience would be vastly different if we did.

Again…lot’s more to say….. Remember what I said about giving me the floor??