Inside Out and Upside Down, the New Life

[HKHaugan]

Inside Out and Upside Down

Recently I wanted to translate an English paragraph into Norwegian and German just to see what it looked like and if I could remember some of these languages in which I am no longer skilled. I used both Google and Bing translators. It was an interesting exercise. I went back and forth, sounded out the languages and grasped the word structure. It's not easy, especially if you've spent the majority of your life immersed in the language of your birth culture. The purpose of studying another language is eventually to think in it and then to speak it. You get a feel for the people and culture of the people who speak it. The same principle is true when it comes to the Bible. It's a physical document with a written language but it has a spiritual meaning to be discerned, thought, then spoken and practiced in every next moment. It's a written language that gives you a feel for God and, if you believe in Him, the spiritual language God speaks through the Holy Spirit who initiated its writing.

The last writing was an exercise, as are all of them, in arriving at a deeper spiritual application of the Lord's words. That's why this one returns to the First Samuel passage we dealt with before. It's loaded with spiritual meaning for our contemporary minds (see Cavemen Are Alive and Kicking and Need Our Help).

“When the men of Israel saw that they were in a strait, for the people were distressed, then the people did hide themselves in caves and in thickets and in rocks and in high places and in pits and in cisterns (1 Samuel 13:6).” We dealt with the cave part but not the other places mentioned here.
When you read passages like this from the Old Testament you want to immediately read them in a New Testament context. In other words, interpret them spiritually. The Old Testament is the visible physical history preparing for the revelation of spiritual reality of God in Jesus. Think spiritually, live spiritually and create spiritually. This is exactly what Jesus did when He was telling parables. His life was a spiritual parallel and fulfillment of the Old Testament. He defined the expectation of what and who He, the Messiah, came to do and be. He was conceived spiritually and born humanly. We were physically conceived by human intention, but born in sin and separated from God with the basic need to be reborn spiritually.

We were in the mind of God before we were born in the flesh (Ps.139:13-16). So, being created in His image (Gen.1:26) makes us spiritual beings. We, like Jesus, are spiritual beings having a human experience but unlike Him in that His spirit is the Holy Spirit and our spirit is dead due to sin until we ask Jesus to forgive us and accept Him as our personal Lord. Then we are reborn spiritually. This is why we reverse the secular way of thinking from what we can see to what we can't see. What is seen is temporary and what is unseen is eternal (2Cor.4:18). Everything we can see and can't see has its origin in Him, the ultimate spiritual person. Is it any wonder that Scripture tells us to “be quick to listen and slow to speak (James 1:19)?” And too, the wise discern and then act (Prov.16:21). We spiritually turn ourselves upside down, exchanging pride for humility before God. We spiritually turn ourselves inside out, serving God first in the presence of others and in that order. It's the way of the Cross that Jesus bore and therefore the way of the Cross for us. From aloneness, fear and hiding to confidence in belief, trust and faith in Jesus. We are God's recovered image in the world. Inside out and upside down is living in a state of repentance receiving a constant stream of living water through Jesus in the power of the Spirit.

In First Samuel we dealt with the cavemen as we said before. They were people who find a secure place intellectually, emotionally and spiritually, in which they can hide. It can be a neighborhood, a house, a profession, a sport, a hobby, a worldview, some place or thing that becomes a hiding place. Hiding to be alone in the darkness.. But the deeper you go in the darker it gets. Addiction is another cave into which one retreats as in pornography, alcohol, drugs, perversion and whatever else goes beyond the moment into slavery, an internal slavery. Obsession and prejudice are yet others.

That illusion to caves was drawn from the above Samuel passage. What we didn't cover in that passage were those who hid themselves in thickets, rocks, high places, pits and cisterns. They are in relatively open areas but the difference is in how they obscure direct vision. The motivation for hiding in all those places is fear (Gen.3:10). The people of Israel were 'in a strait.' A strait is a pressure caused by fear and fear causes stress and distress. It's the time when we anticipate the worst possible things happening and retreat into a self constructed cave as a result.

Thickets. They are dense clusters of underbrush, bushes, briars and brambles. It's where small animals hide and snakes lie in wait. Thickets are hard to maneuver and easy to hide within and behind. To think of thickets is to visualize that an enemy would have trouble seeing you and if he did he'd find it hard to get to you. Thickets can also be the schemes people use to deceive one another personally and emotionally. Confuse the landscape. Politics is a thicket. How about gossip, false witness and lying? What other kinds of thickets surround us today?

We were in a restaurant the other day and a family of five came in and sat down in a table next to us. They were quiet---and the reason? Each one had an electronic device on which they were concentrating, or should I say, hiding behind? The three kids had I-Pads, a different program on each, and the parents had cell phones. There was no family conversation. Electronics have become a thicket to hide in. TV and video games are no less an issue. Fear of being persons to one another is characteristic of our age.

Rocks. If you've ever climbed a mountain and reach the timberline you find piles of rocks and eventually a place where one set of rocks or a rock defines the summit. Mt. Washington and Mt. Lafayette in New Hampshire, Mt. Mitchell and Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina are such examples. But there are rocks and boulders as you climb them and they are great spots from which to see enemies and dart behind if they approach. I see them as attitudes we use to protect ourselves from personal encounters that we deem threatening. We can leap from one to another when we think they are needed. What is the best answer to give when challenged in a conversation?

High Places. When you are up high you can see farther. You take the highest place where you can see all around and observe others as being below you. There's a difference between a high place and high ground however. A high place is a self-assumed position of superiority that gives you status. High ground is standing for something of a common human value, of spiritual worth, our relationship with Jesus and His Word. Now that is the high ground.

The first, the high place, is being self-righteous and taking the local cultural stance on an issue so as to appear above reproach and question, a position of superiority. Or it can be assuming a superior position above those around you, intellectually, socially, economically, ethnically, politically or regionally. Shall we name them? OK. Prep school and the New England college mentality, upper class neighborhood and country club distinction, and you can name their like entities in your own areas. Have we forgotten name dropping? It's when we choose anything that gives us the higher position than someone else's.

The second, the high ground, is called integrity, character formed through adversity, faith that they were developed in a relationship with the Lord God who sets eternal standards for a temporary world. Someone with integrity, spiritual integrity, stands on the high ground and looks for the leading of the Lord through the Holy Spirit, the source of life for the mind, heart and spirit. It's a vision from above not guesswork from beneath.

Pits. Pits are the excuses we use to rationalize what we believe are our failures. You know when you use excuses for lateness or errors you've made or persons you insulted, that you have fallen down inside. Guilt is a pit. Regret is a pit. Remorse is a pit. The very act of justifying why you did something you regretted is a pit. It's a retreat into self-pity and depression which are pits. As soon as you realize you are excusing yourself for something you are in a pit out of which you cannot climb.

Cisterns. Cisterns are large holes in which to store water in areas where there is not much rain. They are not like springs that last on and on. And, if there is no rain for a long while they can dry up and, like a pit, they can be used to hide in even if there is still some water in them. They are usually in large rock formations and can give the feeling of security if you hide in them. Who would look in a cistern for someone hiding? Yet, it is a false sense. In what do we tend to look that gives a false sense of security? I would say, all the foregoing. Cisterns offer a momentary relief, a temporary fix for an eternal need. They all are motivated by fear, the need to survive the moment and being in control of the moment. Jeremiah is more specific and direct when he says “My people have committed two sins: they have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that hold no water (2:13).” Jesus says He is the One from whom come living waters (Jn.7:38).

Inside out and upside down is the way of the Cross and the Resurrection as Jesus intended.