“Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say.”
John 8:43
“It goes so, much, deeper than that.”
This phrase seems to ring in my head whenever someone ‘lost’ says something ‘wise’. When they say something that tells me they are getting closer to a new revelation. I see them near the answer, just right by the truth. They get so close! People, who are not yet, even able to perceive the signals, the wavelengths of truth. They feel around, they know they just brushed it, and they suspect it’s still there, but they cannot see it.
In fact, they can’t look upon it. Some, don’t even have the ability. It’s like trying really, really hard to see ultraviolet light with our naked eyes. You could look at ultraviolet rays flashing in a dark room, forever, and you wouldn’t ever see any light. Our eyes see on a different “spectrum.” Meaning; our eyes gather some information. And also, our noses gather information. Our skin, our ears… and so on. But it’s not all of the information available. Our physical senses harvest some of the available information around us buuuuuut, our brain can, pretty much, do whatever it wants with the information gathered. And since we literally cannot gather every bit of information, the final outcome could be any number of many, many interpretations based on our own experiences and know-how. Most of them are entirely misconceived, mainly because, for the most part, we’ve grown to ignore spiritual information.
I believe our spirits do gather information as well. At least as much as our five other senses do. We just don’t often understand the things we perceive.
Like empathy. Ever heard of “mirror neurons”? They are cells in the brain that activate when we see someone do, or we, ourselves do something familiar. They actually create a feeling of doing the action. So if someone is sad, we literally, feel sadness, as if we were sad, ourselves, and instantly, we are able to empathize on a much deeper level.
I also believe there are things in existence in which we will not ever be able to perceive, while in a human body. Spiritual things. Romans 8 lays this out so well and clearly explains that there is a big, fat difference. Verse 8 says; “Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.”
That means while we are in these filthy flesh-bots we call “ourselves,” the Holy Spirit, only speaks to our spirit. Our flesh cannot perceive God, and God, cannot observe our sin. “…You are pure and cannot stand the sight of evil.” (Habakkuk 1:13) He sees our spirit. Our clean spirit.
He sees who we will be when we reach Him!
He sees Jesus.
But in order for the message of salvation to reach us, for it to have, even a chance to get passed the millennia, He had to be discreet. Jesus’ most common way to teach was through stories they called ‘parables.’ He used stories to point people in the right direction because, if He gave people the truth, without a buffer, no one would receive it. We, as a people , have become so completely decrepit and jaded, through the waxing of foolishness and bad decisions, that our ability to perceive the things of God has been muted to an almost imperceptibly low point. And in fact, we not only have lost the ability to understand God, but most people have gotten so confused that the good things of Christ, now feel, offensive.
The word parable comes from a Greek word. I don’t speak Greek. (I’m smart, I won’t deny it, but I’m honestly not trying to be that smart.) Anyway, after looking it up, “Ballein” (pronunciation…irrelevant?) is the root verb in Greek. It’s where we get the word “bola.” It means: “to throw” or “cast.” The prefix, “para,” means “beside,” or “alongside.”
So when Jesus told parables, He was literally trying to “throw your attention.” He was taking words, and “beating around the bush.” He would speak of something very similar to the things we know about, within our finite capabilities, and hope we would find our way to the thing He really wanted us to see, but couldn’t outrightly say to the masses. Oh, I completely understand, now, why He did this.
In other words, Jesus chooses words to feed those who will understand, without instantly insulting those who will be insulted. How would you tell an extremely arrogant man that he is arrogant, and that arrogant is wrong, without offending him and turning his heart away completely? I’d beat around the bush. Subtle, loving direction, when solicited. And the commitment to live as an example. Do my best to never be arrogant, myself. Otherwise, they will never see the truth. They will only see the offense.
You’ve read Matthew 7? Don’t throw your pearls before the swine? Look it up. It’s basically expressing the importance of tact, and knowing your audience. That, if you put something of value, like a well thought out piece of advice, into the hands of a fool, they will not see its value. You will regret it, and its value will become lost in the mess, and in turn, you also could be “trampled.” You must be cautious, in whom you, completely, confide. Proverbs is chock full of verses about correcting a fool.
(Also, though, toughen up. We are, kind of, called to “throw our pearls before swine.” Everyday, we are called to be a light in a dark world, to be the oddball in a “normal” existence. It’s a risky business and it demands thick skin, but that’s for another day, I suppose.)
So, there are two types of responses out there, if Jesus were just to state the truth plainly; those who will, eventually seek to understand these parables and turn to emulate Him, and those who would instantly hate the teacher for saying what He said and reject God immediately. Unfortunately, as it seemed to be displayed throughout the Bible, there were more people on the latter end than those who were able to receive the message. If Jesus pointed to the truth, being practically imperceptible to mankind, any more directly, not a soul would have been able to choke it down.
When you can’t point to the answer without ruining the relationship, you can only point close to it, and hopefully, the one who needs the realization will eventually figure it out on their own.
Alternatively, if you do not seek to understand the Bible, you will not understand it. You will give up and grab other things. Then, because you have no wisdom or know-how to keep those things, they will be stripped from you, because of your own foolishness and bad choices. And because of God’s holiness, He can’t protect you, because you can’t even hear Him. He can only lead you through, with His voice. His Words. The same words our society has rejected, (for the most part).
Until we ‘relearn’ how God speaks and how to listen for Him, we are just bound for pain and failure, more ruined relationships…more challenges.
Romans 12:2; “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.” Most versions say “the renewing of your mind.” It is “changing the way you think,” but I picture it more like shining an old, green, copper knob or something.
Have you ever shined old, dirty copper? It oxidizes and gets a coating called; “patina.” Some people like it and you’ll see it on old gutters and fancy government buildings’ roofs. It’s green and sometimes, like on a copper drain pipe, in a commercial kitchen, the coat of gunk and dropped food, mixed with the oxidized, green copper gets so, gross and thick. The pipe could look just awful. The thing is though, it comes off rather easily. It shines up so nicely that, once cleaned, it’s possible people could believe the pipe, itself, was brand new. Like it was even better than the original.
“Love is the one thing we can perceive that transcends dimensions of time and space.”
Anne Hathaway, in Interstellar. It’s a wild movie, but this quote hits Christianity right on the head. We can’t always see the clean copper, the end piece, or the graduated disciple. We can’t see what God sees. His ways are higher, His thoughts are bigger, mightier. He’s outside of the constraints of time and decay and He’s speaking to us across dimensions, through stories, from prophets, over two thousand years ago.
It may feel quite offensive, boring, or ineffective at first, but our senses only tell us some of the story.
How are you filling in the blanks?
May God bless you all in wisdom and grace this year.
Happy New Year, all!
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