Foundations of My Thoughts #2
The Ultimate Submission
Proverbs 15:33 KJV “The fear of the Lord is the instruction of wisdom; and before honour is humility.”
I think about this verse often. For me, it has always been a reminder that the key to wisdom lies in obedience. Afterall it is a fool that says in his heart, “There is no God.” Psalm 14:1. Worrying about whether you are right with God is the most fundamentally wise thing a person can do. It’s where wisdom begins. My personal lived experience confirms that just following God’s commands and advice results in the best outcome. At least, on a long enough time scale. But the verse uses the word “fear” and that’s important.
To “fear” God. To be afraid of his wrath. To avoid his ire. To realize that he is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent and also that he has a vested interest in your compliance. It is a scary thing to contemplate. But that is the point, isn’t it. I should fear such a being. I should think about how that being feels about my actions. I should contemplate what that being thinks about my plans. I should consider how that being would judge my words or even deeper, my intentions. If I am to comply with the demands of this entity then it would behoove me to “Know my place.”
I have to understand that I am but a man; an individual; a mortal. One whose knowledge is limited. Whose years are finite. Whose power is pitiful. And by grasping this difference in position, I am able to adopt the appropriate mentality for obeying the entity known as God, a mentality of servitude. I can call myself a servant of God.
Many call themselves servants of God but few in my country and in this day and age actually see themselves that way. Even I fail in this, more often than not. This world privileges individual sovereignty above most if not all other things. It feels that way in the USA, anyway. If I may be so bold, I might extend that analysis to all liberal democracies. Liberalism has that effect on people. But I try to resist it to the best of my ability.
There can be no individual sovereignty in the heart of a servant of an omnipotent and omniscient God. Such an act would be an invitation of ruin. Most certainly, it would be wise to fear such a being. Thus the beginning of wisdom and its very instruction is to obey the commandments and prescriptions of God. Simply and for no other reason than “that is just the way it is”. The reasons will come after. Wisdom is “Loving God with all your heart, mind, and spirit and loving your neighbor as you do yourself.” Knowledge is knowing why you should do those things, why they are good for you, why not doing them is bad for you, etc. This minutia is not necessary, but provides peace of mind to many. All that is necessary is faith.
This self perception of servitude is what I call “The Ultimate Submission”. It is the literal seeing of yourself as a servant. Without a say. Without an input. To understand the nature of the universe and to know your place within it. “The Earth belongs to God. I am just a steward. What I have are gifts from God. I am just a steward. My body was formed by God. I am simply using it until my soul departs to where God is.” This way of thinking is fundamental to me. It is a more extreme way of articulating the kind of faith the Bible tells a Christian they should have.
I believe the Christians of today need to embrace more zealous thinking. I think more people need to make the Ultimate Submission. But that is easier said than done. To tell an American to do away with liberty as a core value is to tell a fish that water is not a necessity for it. It is to tell a bird it need not fly. It is to ask an American to resist their very nature. It can’t be done without the Holy Spirit. Only through him can we resist our own base natures as humans. Once you remove agency from choosing what you want to do and place it in choosing how you’re going to do what you must do, you can finally see the world clearly.
What God Wants
What God wants is agape love. Unconditional love. He wants it at a high intensity as well. Remember Jesus’ first commandment. “Love God with all your heart, mind, and soul.” Mathew 22:37 ESV. God wants that unconditional love at all levels of an individual’s existence. It should be complete. So the whole phrase would be a Complete Agape Love from humans. That is his desire. He wants us to be saved and have eternal life (John 3:16) because we are his children and he loves us with a Complete Agape Love. He simply wishes to save us and have this feeling be reciprocated. The problem is that we have both free will and the knowledge of good and evil. We can both freely choose not to love him back and are inherently not innocent past a certain age. So he interacts with us in the way that he does in order to (1) rescue us from sin and (2) attain our love.
Why does God not just reveal himself?
I’m sure God has his reasons, but I can think of a couple justifications. Exodus 33:20 KJV reads ”And He said, ‘Thou canst not see My face, for there shall no man see Me and live.’”. Jesus also says “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test” in Matthew 4:7. Pretty much, if you saw him directly you’d die and also he doesn’t have to do anything if he doesn’t want to and you can’t test or tempt him. You’re probably thinking “‘Because he doesn’t wanna’ isn’t a good argument and obviously there are ways we can see him without having to look directly at him. I mean, Moses did it. Why doesn’t God just do it again?” Because if he were to use his power in an obviously direct manner to prove himself in front of all humanity while announcing with a loud booming voice “I am God. I am real.” it would probably inspire immense fear. That kind of defeats the point of all of this in the first place. Remember he wants your Complete Agape Love. Not your fear. If you obeyed him out of fear of his omnipotence then you wouldn’t ever love him the way he loves you. Then you’d really be a slave. It’d mean all this trouble was for nothing and he’d have to return to the Old Testament way of doing things. If you only fear God and can’t ever bring yourself to love him then could you accept Jesus as your personal savior? Could you give your sins to him willingly or would you feel compelled to do it. You see? Salvation becomes forced conversion. I get the impression that wouldn’t work.
I would love God if I had a reason to. If he would just do x, y, z or if I didn’t have to deal with a, b, and c then I’d love him.
The love has to be unconditional and complete. If he has to do anything then the love is conditional and the point is once again defeated. There’s a whole book about God testing if a person’s love and loyalty to God was conditional or not. It’s called the book of Job. God shouldn’t have to earn your love. If he does something for you it's because he is kind and he loves you. But in my opinion he’s earned our love anyway. He made us and had his son crucified for us.
Why does he have to be so cryptic and secretive about his existence and his relationship with us?
To be honest, I think this is just what he has to do to gain our Complete Agape Love and our Salvation. I think there is no other way to go about this process than the way God has chosen. Providing a path to redemption from sin and then having a unique relationship with each individual human being. I believe God figures that humans won’t run in fear or feel oppressed if he can emphasize the father-child relationship instead of just having the master-servant relationship. Both dimensions of analysis are accurate by the way. God is an Omnipotent spirit and we are mortal men. In addition, we are in a very materialistic age. In order that we might grow to love him, we must learn to love him in all the small ways. The ways we can understand at our level. From our safe travels, to our close friends and family, to all our possessions, and most obviously through the simultaneous chaos and order of nature, and further beyond. A Christian can find God in all of his creations. Both in the ones made in his image and the ones not. Both the animate and inanimate. Both in the natural and, yes, even in the mechanical. God does reveal himself to us. It’s on an individual and personal basis. One at a time and all at once.
What The Devil Wants
To understand the Devil is to understand a man. Yes, he is a fallen angel. He is the accuser of humanity and the prosecutor of the brethren. But...his motivations are very human. The long and short of it is that he’s jealous. Jealous of humanity and God.
Jealous of Humanity
The Devil doesn’t understand why God loves humanity so much. God gave dominion over all of creation to man in Genesis. Of all things to gain dominion over the Earth, its seas, its skies, and all that dwell within them. To man, all of creation. He can’t accept that humanity would receive so much. To even have Jesus die for humanity. To even have a place in heaven for all those who are saved. It vexes Satan. I don’t blame him. I bet the events of Genesis came out of left field for everyone but God. I think deep down, Satan wanted to be acknowledged by God especially. Satan is described as beautiful, cunning, knowledgeable on the Word of God, and powerful. He was among the heavenly council when God was bragging about how great Job was (Job 1). Satan is proud. He thinks of himself as deserving of more than what he had. It feels very human to me. But I believe there is a more profound motivation for his antagonism than this surface one.
Jealous of God
Remember this axiom. God alone has complete liberty. Outside of God, complete liberty does not exist. Outside of God, the only liberty that exists is free will. There is no further liberty than this. Not even for the angels. Nor the demons. Nor any spirit. Nor any principality. Nor any power. Those who serve good, serve God. Those who serve evil, serve sin. There is no in-between. There is no neutrality. It does not exist. God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. God is also good. Literally. God is good. God is the concept of good. There is no good apart from God. There is no good that is not also Godly. Everything outside of God and good is evil. Everything outside of God and good is sin. I’m talking about metaphysics here, God is still omnipresent. Those who are in sin are slaves to it. That is it. There are no exceptions. To be in sin is to be in slavery. John 8:34 KJV “Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.” This quote from Jesus does not apply exclusively to humanity. It applies to Satan as well.
Satan wants complete liberty. Freedom from all things. Perfect abstraction. Complete inhibition. To be truly free. At the top of his own pyramid in the cosmos. But this is impossible. Only God has this and God has no equal. God shares his throne with no one. And he is a Jealous God indeed (Exodus 34:14). Sin is the absence of God in a spiritual, metaphysical sense. Where sin is, God can not abide. Only in sin is Satan free of God, but in sin Satan is a slave to it. He is proud, deceitful, covetous, and so much more. And it shall be his undoing (book of Revelation). He can’t escape. He can never be free. So he has chosen to lash out against God. It is why he wishes to build an army to unseat him. It is why he conspires to separate us, God's children, from God. To have us share his fate in the pit. All of this to spite God. Because to the Devil, his very existence is unfair. And only God is to blame.
This is also my personal justification for why true liberty from all things does not exist.