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.
Indeed, you might find this quote from Einstein interesting:
I agree with Roger Penrose (mathematical physicist, Oxford) - namely that we need a new kind of physics to resolve the obvious challenges of quantum entanglement (non-locality at distance) and more.
Quantum entanglement is where the quantum states of two or more objects have to be described with reference to one another regardless of the extent to which they may be spatially separated. Which is to say the measurement of one of two entangled photons will determine the other even if it is 10 kilometers away, on the moon, in another galaxy, etc.
In four dimensions (one temporal, three spatial) it violates the speed of light limitation. And as Penrose pointed out, it also suggests a paradox when both of the entangled photons are simultaneously measured. With two time dimensions, there is no issue.
By the way, because experiments (up to 10 kilometers) confirmed the phenomenon – there was a great deal of hope for superluminal communications. However, the no-cloning theorem forbids creation of identical copies of an unknown quantum state therefore no error correction, computing or communications at superluminal speeds. Even so, the non-cloning theorem and quantum entanglement offers a great solution for quantum cryptography, i.e. no one could “eavesdrop” on the quantum superluminal cryptographic key. The bottom line is that one must lay aside presuppositions of a timeline, arrow of time, speed of light limitation, light cones etc. when dealing with two or more time dimension theories.
From a theological point of view, the theories also suggest that God - being beyond space and time - sees past present and future all at once and moreover, that He has creative power over physical causation "in" space/time of however many dimensions. For instance, a change in the future instantly effects the past and present because they are concurrent on the time plane (or cube, etc.) And such a change would obviously be completely undetectable to observers "in" space and time.
No doubt such speculations involving two or more time dimensions have been fodder for many science fiction scripts as well as mysticism involving precognition, retro-cognition, remote viewing, etc.
But there are credible theories involving multiple time dimensions. Vafa's (geometric physics, Harvard) f-theory follows the Kaluza/Klein compactification model for extra dimensions (string theories) whereas P.S. Wesson's entails higher dimensional dynamics. The Wesson (physics and astronomy, Waterloo) Five Dimensional Relativity Two Times theory posits that the 1080 particles in the observable four dimensional universe are actually multiply imaged from as little as a single particle in an expanded time-like fifth dimension.
Fascinating theories ...
Yep. These dudes really have got themselves trapped into a truth-suffocating intellectual box of their own making. Good luck to them, this class of highly-educated moral morons who, because they consider themselves the "brights," are just "naturally determined," on Darwinian grounds I imagine, to rule the rest of us, whom they call the "dims".
[At least as Richard Dwkins and Daniel Dennett imagine it, in their "hands-across-the Pond" assault on Christianity.... This is a public fact.]
The hard and fast box into which these moral morons have gotten themselves entrapped is the idea that only those events in Reality that can be directly observed and measured count as "real."
The next step is to say that entities subject to the second law of thermodynamics definitely qualify as "real" — because they are measurable in terms of observable thermodynamic effects. [Talk about "circular reasoning!"]
Well, if all you want to do is explore the problems of "heat death," then have a good time with such intellectual prescriptive offerings!!!
What does anything of this have to do with the question: "What is Life?" Isn't that supposed to be the main inquiry of the biological sciences? Or am I just a naive person?
The classical term for a thinker committed to this reductive propensity of thought is idiotes [Cicero]; or nabal [Hebrew scripture]. "Nabal" translates as: "The man who says in his heart, 'There is no God.'" In Cicero, idiotes translates as: The man who refuses to apperceive Reality: He is the man who embodies the character of aspernatio rationalis, of "contemptuous disdain for reason."
Nowadays, practically no one understands such insights, nor the concerns for personal and social order that they implicate.
Anyhoot and whatever. I do believe you are entirely correct in thinking that there is a companion coordinate system engaging the three-of-space-and-one-of-time dimensional model which enjoys so much currency in contemporary science. Notwithstanding the revolutions of relativity and quantum theory of the past century. Whatever these theories proposed, their import apparently is still largely undigested by the biological scientific community at large nowadays.
But I do believe you show a "direction" into which the scientific community might move to break the shackles of reductionism, and actually "get somewhere" in the real, that is to say truthful, understanding of the natural world....
Thank you ever so much, dear brother in Christ, for sharing your wonderful, thought-provoking insights!!!
So...... eternity is NOT Possible.?..
because if eternity future is possible eternity PAST must also be possible..
AND if eternity past is possible... there might not have been a beginning..
There are ramifications to everything.. that is to say.. "EXPANDING" might be the "wrong word" for whats goin' on..
Maybe; revolving, speeding up, dimension shift, or "something else"...
Still, it seems that "eternity," by definition, cannot be measured in terms of "past" and "future." So what, exactly, are you trying to "measure" here? A fleeting "present?" How does one "measure" that which is "fleeting?"
Guess we need to consult Zeno on that "paradox!"
Hope all is well with you, my dear brother. Please say "HI!" to H. (assuming he's still on the scene....) May Christ's love and light and grace be with you!
If the most recent work in zero point field is any indication, we have an example of a ‘smaller’ coordinate system which is impinged/in reaction with/by our coordinate system. Actual Physicist calculations are now indicating that inertia and (therefore) gravity arise from the ‘effects’ of the zero point field which fills the entire Universe at sub-sub-atomic level. Could it be that energy is the result of the zero point coordinate system impinging a greater coordinate system in which our reality arises? It is looking more and more like that is in fact what reality is all about. And then we have the greater coordinate system of the spirit and the scenes of Jesus interacting across that coordinate system from our coordinate system. ... But I’m an old man ...
The question you and I so often posed on this forum was "What is the difference between life and non-life/death in nature." Strangely, the correspondents could easily list what life looks like but not what life "is."
I'm sure you'll remember the thought experiments. Take an amoeba and try to figure out what it "is" - but to do this, one must kill it. Obviously, the whole was greater than the sum of the parts.
Likewise we discussed breaking down an imaginary rabbit. At some point of doing this to the ill fated imaginary rabbit, it was no longer alive and yet our correspondents were unable to define what was removed that the made the difference between life and death.
Ultimately we gravitated to Shannon (father of information theory) and his definition of information, i.e. information is the reduction of uncertainty in the receiver or molecular machine as it moves from a before state to an after state. It is the communication itself, the action, not the message.
When an autonomous thing "in" nature is successfully communicating (information) it is alive - if it no longer does or never could, it is not alive.
Indeed, the polio virus being created in a lab using the information content off the internet (post 158) stands as evidence. They obtained the message - RNA - and used materials to communicate that message. Voila - polio!
So, I imagine good and evil are not real to these people, then.
Their good is what they see benefiting themselves.
Evil is that which does not.
Situational justification.
In my view, we should consider the word "timeless" when thinking of God the Creator and "no counting" when thinking of eternity.
Some might be more comfortable calling it a "universal now."
Consider the photon, it travels a "null path" - for the photon no time elapses though certainly observers of the photon (from their reference frame) sense time passing while observing the photon. The photon is in a universal now or a no counting of time. The observers are not.
Likewise, when thinking in terms of universal nows or no counting of time - past, present and future are meaningless. Everything is now.
Space/time on the other hand is a continuum. It is relentlessly physical. There was a beginning of real space and real time and no matter how far one moves the goal post to prior universes, there is always a beginning of real space and real time. That is the poison pill to physical cosmologies except of course for Tegmark's Level IV which is radical Platonism.
Another interesting point is that physical cosmologists presuppose that the physical laws/constants of this universe would apply to prior ones. That is wishful thinking.
Also there is the issue of origin of physical causation per se and inertia for that matter - not to mention space, time and energy.
In that view, the physical brain is the murderer or philanthropist not a person, that's just an epiphenomenon. LOLOL!
Thank you so much for sharing your insights, dear brother in Christ!
But, how often will they in their illogical lives exclaim about something, "Oh, Good!" or "Oh, that's Awful!"
Real.
BTW, qualia must stump them. Qualia are things that can be experienced but cannot be conveyed, e.g. love/hate, pain/pleasure.
If it were the mechanical Newtonian universe they envision, such things could not exist. Indeed, they can't in their view because they are not strictly physical.
Good point.. made.. while I did my stand up routine..
Measure LOVE.... even LIFE... Joy... Hate?..
So many, measure so much with no way to know they may be wrong.. partially wrong, or even partially correct...
Could be primates are not really very good accountants..
This notion of different coordinates systems should not surprise a Christian. Daniel Chapter five shows it, as well as Jesus leaving the tomb. Phillip may have experienced it also with the end of his explanation to the Ethiopian. And there are several more examples in Old and New Testament.
Second Reality is like a mouse in a maze...
First reality is totally FREE..
Things are easily measured in a maze..
Which brings to mind.. can humans measure anything accurately..
I know a bit poetic but just being human may be a second reality..
To wit; a human that dies may enter first reality..
You know there may be "qualities" of second reality's..
i.e. some better than others.. higher digs as mazes..
If we had four spatial dimension ability, for instance, we'd be able to remove the contents of a box without opening it!
And it becomes even more exciting when we consider multiple time dimensions.
I'll avoid the "second reality" term as it has a specific meaning in Voegelin/Musil philosophy, roughly an imaginary world a person conjures in lieu of the actual world.
But indeed, the reality we mortals experience with our severely limited 4D minds and vision (3 space and 1 time) is but only one reality. When we graduate from this one (or phase change following Wesson's theory) - we will experience a different reality.
For us Christians, it will be heaven. And according to Revelation there will be a new heaven after that. And, of course, some of us Christians expect a stay in purgatory first. Some expect a long sleep first.
And also according to Scripture, there will be other, unpleasant, destinations...
I am presently more involved with establishing the notion that lesser coordinate systems imprint the larger coordinate systems, as in a photon, which exists in a lesser coordinate system impacts a greater coordinate system precisely because dimension Time and dimension Space have variable expressions, such as point, linear, planar, volume, moment, past, present, future. The Universe as a whole ‘thing’ is a realm of future/volume. ‘Lesser’ coordinate systems exist within this future/volume and interact between coordinate systems via some energy exchange medium that we might call the ‘zero point field’.
For lurkers: Holographic Universe Experiment Begins
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