Posted on 01/06/2015 5:13:00 AM PST by metmom
The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kindgom of heaven. - Matt. 5:3
Before the Lord God made man upon the earth He first prepared for him by creating a world of useful and pleasant things for his sustenance and delight. In the Genesis account of the creation these are called simply "things." They were made for man's uses, but they were meant always to be external to the man and subservient to him. In the deep heart of the man was a shrine where none but God was worthy to come. Within him was God; without, a thousand gifts which God had showered upon him.
But sin has introduced complications and has made those very gifts of God a potential source of ruin to the soul.
Our woes began when God was forced out of His central shrine and "things" were allowed to enter. Within the human heart "things" have taken over. Men have now by nature no peace within their hearts, for God is crowned there no longer, but there in the moral dusk stubborn and aggressive usurpers fight among themselves for first place on the throne.
This is not a mere metaphor, but an accurate analysis of our real spiritual trouble. There is within the human heart a tough fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess. It covets "things" with a deep and fierce passion. The pronouns "my" and "mine" look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant. They express the real nature of the old Adamic man better than a thousand volumes of theology could do. They are verbal symptoms of our deep disease. The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die. Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended. God's gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution.
Our Lord referred to this tyranny of things when He said to His disciples, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it."
Breaking this truth into fragments for our better understanding, it would seem that there is within each of us an enemy which we tolerate at our peril. Jesus called it "life" and "self," or as we would say, the selflife. Its chief characteristic is its possessiveness: the words "gain" and "profit" suggest this. To allow this enemy to live is in the end to lose everything. To repudiate it and give up all for Christ's sake is to lose nothing at last, but to preserve everything unto life eternal. And possibly also a hint is given here as to the only effective way to destroy this foe: it is by the Cross. "Let him take up his cross and follow me."
The way to deeper knowledge of God is through the lonely valleys of soul poverty and abnegation of all things. The blessed ones who possess the Kingdom are they who have repudiated every external thing and have rooted from their hearts all sense of possessing. These are the "poor in spirit." They have reached an inward state paralleling the outward circumstances of the common beggar in the streets of Jerusalem; that is what the word "poor" as Christ used it actually means. These blessed poor are no longer slaves to the tyranny of things. They have broken the yoke of the oppressor; and this they have done not by fighting but by surrendering. Though free from all sense of possessing, they yet possess all things. "Theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
Let me exhort you to take this seriously. It is not to be understood as mere Bible teaching to be stored away in the mind along with an inert mass of other doctrines. It is a marker on the road to greener pastures, a path chiseled against the steep sides of the mount of God. We dare not try to by-pass it if we would follow on in this holy pursuit. We must ascend a step at a time. If we refuse one step we bring our progress to an end.
As is frequently true, this New Testament principle of spiritual life finds its best illustration in the Old Testament. In the story of Abraham and Isaac we have a dramatic picture of the surrendered life as well as an excellent commentary on the first Beatitude.
Abraham was old when Isaac was born, old enough indeed to have been his grandfather, and the child became at once the delight and idol of his heart. From that moment when he first stooped to take the tiny form awkwardly in his arms he was an eager love slave of his son. God went out of His way to comment on the strength of this affection. And it is not hard to understand. The baby represented everything sacred to his father's heart: the promises of God, the covenants, the hopes of the years and the long messianic dream. As he watched him grow from babyhood to young manhood the heart of the old man was knit closer and closer with the life of his son, till at last the relationship bordered upon the perilous. It was then that God stepped in to save both father and son from the consequences of an uncleansed love.
"Take now thy son," said God to Abraham, "thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of." The sacred writer spares us a close-up of the agony that night on the slopes near Beersheba when the aged man had it out with his God, but respectful imagination may view in awe the bent form and convulsive wrestling alone under the stars. Possibly not again until a Greater than Abraham wrestled in the Garden of Gethsemane did such mortal pain visit a human soul. If only the man himself might have been allowed to die. That would have been easier a thousand times, for he was old now, and to die would have been no great ordeal for one who had walked so long with God. Besides, it would have been a last sweet pleasure to let his dimming vision rest upon the figure of his stalwart son who would live to carry on the Abrahamic line and fulfill in himself the promises of God made long before in Ur of the Chaldees.
How should he slay the lad! Even if he could get the consent of his wounded and protesting heart, how could he reconcile the act with the promise, "In Isaac shall thy seed be called"? This was Abraham's trial by fire, and he did not fail in the crucible. While the stars still shone like sharp white points above the tent where the sleeping Isaac lay, and long before the gray dawn had begun to lighten the east, the old saint had made up his mind. He would offer his son as God had directed him to do, and then trust God to raise him from the dead. This, says the writer to the Hebrews, was the solution his aching heart found sometime in the dark night, and he rose "early in the morning" to carry out the plan. It is beautiful to see that, while he erred as to God's method, he had correctly sensed the secret of His great heart. And the solution accords well with the New Testament Scripture, "Whosoever will lose for my sake shall find."
God let the suffering old man go through with it up to the point where He knew there would be no retreat, and then forbade him to lay a hand upon the boy. To the wondering patriarch He now says in effect, "It's all right, Abraham. I never intended that you should actually slay the lad. I only wanted to remove him from the temple of your heart that I might reign unchallenged there. I wanted to correct the perversion that existed in your love. Now you may have the boy, sound and well. Take him and go back to your tent. Now I know that thou fearest God, seeing that thou bast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me."
Then heaven opened and a voice was heard saying to him, "By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou bast done this thing, and bast not withheld thy son, thine only son: that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is `upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou bast obeyed my voice.
The old man of God lifted his head to respond to the Voice, and stood there on the mount strong and pure and grand, a man marked out by the Lord for special treatment, a friend and favorite of the Most High. Now he was a man wholly surrendered, a man utterly obedient, a man who possessed nothing. He had concentrated his all in the person of his dear son, and God had taken it from him. God could have begun out on the margin of Abraham's life and worked inward to the center; He chose rather to cut quickly to the heart and have it over in one sharp act of separation. In dealing thus He practiced an economy of means and time. It hurt cruelly, but it was effective.
I have said that Abraham possessed nothing. Yet was not this poor man rich? Everything he had owned before was his still to enjoy: sheep, camels, herds, and goods of every sort. He had also his wife and his friends, and best of all he had his son Isaac safe by his side. He had everything, but he possessed nothing. There is the spiritual secret. There is the sweet theology of the heart which can be learned only in the school of renunciation. The books on systematic theology overlook this, but the wise will understand.
After that bitter and blessed experience I think the words "my" and "mine" never had again the same meaning for Abraham. The sense of possession which they connote was gone from his heart. Things had been cast out forever. They had now become external to the man. His inner heart was free from them. The world said, "Abraham is rich," but the aged patriarch only smiled. He could not explain it to them, but he knew that he owned nothing, that his real treasures were inward and eternal.
There can be no doubt that this possessive clinging to things is one of the most harmful habits in the life. Because it is so natural it is rarely recognized for the evil that it is; but its outworkings are tragic.
We are often hindered from giving up our treasures to the Lord out of fear for their safety; this is especially true when those treasures are loved relatives and friends. But we need have no such fears. Our Lord came not to destroy but to save. Everything is safe which we commit to Him, and nothing is really safe which is not so committed.
Our gifts and talents should also be turned over to Him. They should be recognized for what they are, God's loan to us, and should never be considered in any sense our own. We have no more right to claim credit for special abilities than for blue eyes or strong muscles. "For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what bast thou that thou didst not receive?"
The Christian who is alive enough to know himself even slightly will recognize the symptoms of this possession malady, and will grieve to find them in his own heart. If the longing after God is strong enough within him he will want to do something about the matter. Now, what should he do?
First of all he should put away all defense and make no attempt to excuse himself either in his own eyes or before the Lord. Whoever defends himself will have himself for his defense, and he will have no other; but let him come defenseless before the Lord and he will have for his defender no less than God Himself. Let the inquiring Christian trample under foot every slippery trick of his deceitful heart and insist upon frank and open relations with the Lord.
Then he should remember that this is holy business. No careless or casual dealings will suffice. Let him come to God in full determination to be heard. Let him insist that God accept his all, that He take E things out of his heart and Himself reign there in power. It may be he will need to become specific, to name things and people by their names one by one. If he will become drastic enough he can shorten the time of his travail from years to minutes and enter the good land long before his slower brethren who coddle their feelings and insist upon caution in their dealings with God.
Let us never forget that such a truth as this cannot be learned by rote as one would learn the facts of physical science. They must be experienced before we can really know them. We must in our hearts live through Abraham's harsh and bitter experiences if we would know the blessedness which follows them. The ancient curse will not go out painlessly; the tough old miser within us will not lie down and die obedient to our command. He must be torn out of our heart like a plant from the soil; he must be extracted in agony and blood like a tooth from the jaw. He must be expelled from our soul by violence as Christ expelled the money changers from the temple. And we shall need to steel ourselves against his piteous begging, and to recognize it as springing out of self-pity, one of the most reprehensible sins of the human heart.
If we would indeed know God in growing intimacy we must go this way of renunciation. And if we are set upon the pursuit of God He will sooner or later bring us to this test. Abraham's testing was, at the time, not known to him as such, yet if he had taken some course other than the one he did, the whole history of the Old Testament would have been different. God would have found His man, no doubt, but the loss to Abraham would have been tragic beyond the telling. So we will be brought one by one to the testing place, and we may never know when we are there. At that testing place there will be no dozen possible choices for us; just one and an alternative, but our whole future will be conditioned by the choice we make.
Father, I want to know Thee, but my coward heart fears to give up its toys. I cannot part with them without inward bleeding, and I do not try to hide from Thee the terror of the parting. I come trembling, but 1 do come. Please root from my heart all those things which 1 have cherished so long and which have become a very part of my living self, so that Thou mayest enter avid dwell there without a rival. Then shalt Thou make the place of Thy feet glorious. Then shall my heart have no need of the sun to shine in it, for Thyself wilt be the light of it, and there shall be no night there. In Jesus' Name, Amen.
In your opinion.
To illustrate, check out what Jesus told Phillip in John's Gospel, Chapter fourteen, regarding the inability of the disciple to be 'shown the father God'. That was, for all practical purposes a Physics lesson, explaining that dimensionally God is so much greater than His created Universe that the complete vision of The Father is an impossibility for Phillip. What Jesus offers to Phillip is the most Phillip can 'know' of God, of God's nature.
Since you brought up the issue of physics. To the best of my knowledge the majority of Christians believe that God is an infinite being/ person. They also believe that God is three separate persons; God the Father, God the Son (Jesus), and God the Holy Spirit. This means that you would have three separate infinities. That is an awful lot of infinities!
Nor was I trying to imply that you personally had. I was just trying to make a general point that a person like Richard Dawkins might approve of. (I don't know whether you are a fan of his....)
Why is it that the most strident denigrators of Christianity seem to be among the most ignorant with respect to knowledge of the subject matter they attack?
You noted that "on other threads I lurk on the Catholics are called pagan." Yes indeed. It is distressing. But then, a Roman Catholic might retort: "The Reformed Church has too much fallen under the influence of post-Enlightenment modes of thought."
By "pagan," the Reformed Church declares its animosity to "Greek thought" — that is, to classical philosophy of the Platonic–Aristotelian type. But then I find that many first-rate theologians of the Reformed Church hold St. Augustine in the highest honor and respect. Who was a full-blown Platonist. [Arguably, the theology of St. Paul was nourished from this source as well.] But the great saint and doctor of the Church Aquinas — who helped convey the great legacy of Aristotle to the West — and Anselm (who can be said as entirely operating on Platonic noetic and ontological grounds) can be roundly despised as venturing into territory outside of "sola scriptura," and thus must be distrusted and reviled for that very reason.
Go Figure. Call it a "family quarrel" and get over it. Since you are presumably a member of a family, you are likely already perfectly well aware of how painful family quarrels can be....
Personally, I like the way St. Justin Martyr handled this problem. He was a Christian philosopher of the second century A.D., a relentless seeker of Truth — an exemplar of fides quaerens intellectum, of faith seeking understanding, faith seeking its reason. He had been to study with the Stoics; he'd gone to the Lyceum (Aristotle's school); I gather he even hanged out with the Epicureans for a time. Nothing satisfied. Until he found Plato.
The upshot of this encounter: Justin found and declared that the Incarnation of Christ was not only the complete fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, but it was also a complete fulfillment of classical philosophy.
The details of this immense insight are beyond the scope of the present writing. Though I'd love to explore them further with anybody who cares about the eternal fides quaerens intellectum....
Oh, before I sign off for now, just a quick note on the difference between Zeus and company and the divine Trinity. Zeus and his family were all intracosmic gods. That is to say, they were all "creatures" of a "creator," just like man; but unlike man, they were immortal.
The divine Trinity, on the other hand, is wholly uncreated, sui-generis, self-subsistent, undivided pure Being, that is on the one hand wholly transcendent — meaning, utterly Beyond the Cosmos (Plato's key insight) — yet at the same time wholly immanent in the lawful working out of the worlds of nature and human existence. The sheer, absolute "Beyondness" of Plato's god renders him totally unintelligible, indescribable, in human understanding and language.
But Justin Martyr's key, liberating insight was that, with the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, Plato's god of the Beyond is brought into the realm of immanence, thus of human understanding. He is the bridge between the heavenly (infinite) and earthly (finite) realms, in both of which human souls necessarily participate, "from Alpha to Omega."
I'll hold off on a discussion of modern scientific cosmologies, almost all of which nowadays are trying to obviate the necessity of an Origin of the universe. But only because I've run on so long already. (I'm deeply interested in this topic. Maybe we can revisit it later.)
Anyhoot, in closing, as far as your "spiritual development" is concerned, taking advice from Justice Potter Stewart "as to the proof I will accept" does not strike me as out of line. Regarding his requirement of an acceptable criterion of judgment, he said "I will know it when I see it."
Skepticism is a good attitude to have these days, given that so many faux-religions have sprung up in recent times. Including "scientistic" ones.
If you seek truth, then I'd say you're on the right path. If you have an open mind, and above all, an open heart, Truth — that is to say, God — will find you.
And when He does, may you know the fullness of His Grace and Light.
All you have to do is say (in your heart): God help me.
Just some thoughts FWTW. Be well, my friend. And thank you so much for writing.
Since you brought up the issue of physics. To the best of my knowledge the majority of Christians believe that God is an infinite being/ person. They also believe that God is three separate persons; God the Father, God the Son (Jesus), and God the Holy Spirit. This means that you would have three separate infinities. That is an awful lot of infinities!
Define infinite?...
First, the very term 'infinity' has many different uses. As Christians use the term it means 'not finite'. The God we worship as Creator brought time into existence at the big bang. As such the use of infinite to describe God, if used in a temporal sense, is a major inaccuracy. God as Jesus is in a temporal relationship to the created Universe. God The Father Almighty is greater than His creation.
Second, you inserted the word 'separate' when defining the way Christians name the Trinity. That is actually an inaccuracy, also. God manifests as three different individualities, but these are each and at the same time God, thus they cannot be separate or there would be three gods, and God tells us He is one, not three separate.
Jesus explained this connection (unification, not separateness) to Phillip in terms He believed would end the harangue going on between the disciples over whether Jesus was Messiah, The Son of God, thus God with them.
Last, you again expose the agenda of your most recent little foray at FR by using the term 'infinities' in a temporal sense. As shown to you above, that sense of temporal is incorrect, and in your case, deliberately used that way.
So, again, in what context would the proof you seek have to be framed?
Neglected to ping you ... ping-a-ling-a-ling
Set him on dry land for a few minutes...
Good question!
One that I have is: Just who thought up...
... the story of Zeus, Apollo and his twin sister Artemis.
You mean like...
...Catholics?
Ok, Tom.
John 20:29
Jesus said unto him, “Thomas, because thou hast seen Me, thou hast believed. Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed.”
Don't worry. We have room.
Do you want the really BIG definition, or the really SMALL one?
I so agree, dear brother in Christ!
Which is why I think maybe Christians should stop using the term "infinity" with respect to the Being of God.
"Infinity" is, after all, a term from the lexicon of mathematics. It denotes a condition of limitlessness in time, of something without spatiotemporal limit. Which, WRT God, is certainly a reasonable, apperceptive observation.
But it also is an attempt to "reduce God" to human metrics. Which, as I earlier suggested, is an exercise in futility. For such a reduction forgets that God is the Creator of time, and so cannot just be lumped in with the rest of the created furniture of the universe so to be subjected to the imposition of time upon himself.
Maybe, rather than "infinite," we Christians should use the words "eternal," or "timeless." That sort of thing might get rid of certain epistemological difficulties.
Thank you so much for writing, MHGinTN! It's good to hear from you again.
A good epistemological point betty. I’ve always used “eternal” rather than any of the other possible words.
Now you’ve, just a little better, helped me understand why. Thanks.
Anselm's analysis is particularly helpful to those willing to reason it through. Thank you for bringing it to the table.
And thank you for your support, truly I never said nor believe that God entirely "reduces" to the Bible. Jeepers.
You and I have been in many discussions of this type over the years and our book Timothy addressees many of the issues directly in a dialogue with a composite of our correspondents.
As with the frog, one must look to see.
LOLOL! Excellent, dear marron!
In the absence of time, events cannot occur.
Indeed, the only cosmology which is “closed” is Max Tegmark’s Level IV Parallel Universe. And it is closed precisely because it is radical Platonism, it is not physical. In effect, it posits that everything observed “in” space/time is actually a manifestation of mathematical structures which really exist outside of space and time.
Mathematically, the dimension of a space is the minimum number of coordinates (axes) necessary to identify a point within the space. A space of zero dimensions is a point; one dimension, a line, two dimensions, a plane; three, a cube, etc. That is the geometry of it. In zero dimensions, the mathematical point is indivisible.
It is not nothing. It is a spatial point. A singularity is not nothing.
In ex nihilo Creation (beginning of space/time) - the dimensions are not merely zero, they are null, dimensions do not exist at all. There is no space and no time. Period.
There is no mathematical point, no volume, no content, no scalar quantities. Ex nihilo doesn’t exist in relationship to anything else; there is no thing.
In an existing physical space, each point (e.g. particle) can be parameterized by a quantity such as mass. The parameter (e.g. a specific quantity within the range of possible quantities) is in effect another descriptor or quasi-dimension that uniquely identifies the point within the space.
Moreover, if the quantity of the parameter changes for a point, then a time dimension is invoked. For example, at one moment the point value is “0” and the next it is “1”.
Wave propagation (e.g. big bang, inflation) cannot occur in null dimensions nor can it occur in zero spatial dimensions, a mathematical point; a dimension of time is required for any fluctuation in a parameter value at a point.
Moreover, wave propagation must also have a spatial/temporal relation from cause point to effect point, i.e. physical causation.
For instance “0” at point nt causes “1” at point n+1t+1 which causes "0" at point n+1t+2 etc..
Obviously, physical wave propagation (e.g. big bang/inflationary model) cannot precede space/time and physical causality. Again,
In the absence of time, events cannot occur.
God's Name is I AM
It is a great and delightful wonderment to me, dearest sister in Christ, to find that Plato's insights of roughly two-and-a-half millennia ago as to the fundamental order of the Cosmos, the Universe, really of Being, has been so wonderfully explicated by a mathematical physicist of our own time. That is, Max Tegmark's Level IV cosmology, explicated in "Parallel Universes" (Scientific American, 2004.)
Also, I am highly intrigued by P.S. Wesson's , which proposes that spacetime is to be defined as (at least) three of space, and two (at least) of time.
Recently, I have read David Bohm's extraordinary Wholeness and the Implicate Order (2002). The interesting thing here is that Bohm's thinking seems to draw on the great pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus at least as much as Plato's thought did.
Is "classical philosophy" enjoying some kind of a "come-back" of intellectual respectability here, in so-called post-modern times?"
I certainly hope so!!! It seems to me the classical philosophers were awesomely good at tracking intellectual problems right down to the ground....
Yet evidently, there are people out there who want to "kill" God and human history because of the inconveniences such "old" frameworks pose to their own "enlightened" projects. But it seems such folk never see that they saw off the same branch on which they logically sit by doing this....
'Nuff said. Thank you so much dearest sister for your wonderfully illuminating essay-post!!!
I certainly hope so!!! It seems to me the classical philosophers were awesomely good at tracking intellectual problems right down to the ground....
For one thing, Biology cannot continue to ignore first and final cause.
Thank you oh so very much for ALL of your wonderful insights, dearest sister in Christ! And thank you for your encouragements!
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