It's as Plain as the Nose on Your Face

[HKHaugan]

“The process of being human in every dimension is invisible. All of this invisibility is spiritual in that it has a moral base from which no one is exempt. Morality is a spiritual structure motivating behavior. Even atheism and agnosticism are belief systems thus making them ‘religious’ by definition and spiritual in nature. They have a form of morality and a strategy to engage their ideas. They believe in not believing or concluding they believe in not knowing. It’s bad to believe and good not to know, both having to do with unseen conclusions. No human being can say he doesn’t believe because that’s the way we are built. That’s illogical. It is impossible not to believe and not to know (Principles 16).”

Some try to avoid by not believing but not believing is believing and it takes effort which is believing in a process of anti-belief. No matter how you cut it, belief is a built-in spiritual quality and what drives our beliefs is spiritual because it’s unseen.

For discussion's sake three things need to be developed from that statement, invisibility, morality and religion. I don’t mean to belabor the subject but the reality they present is as important as they are obvious. Now by obvious I mean they are apparent but we just don’t think about them. They have been left in the dust of our avoidance.

First, invisibility. When the obvious is overlooked, taken for granted or avoided it is in our nature either to avoid or confront the obvious. The most elementary human awareness is the self, its aloneness, its unpredictability and its imperfections. Just saying ”I” we know immediately we are in another dimension. In fact we spend all of our time in that dimension. Sure, when we look in the mirror we can see a body and its reactions in sound and behavior but the motivation that causes those physical reactions is invisible. And the person inside is invisible as is the process used to arrive at our visible response.

Second, morality. The built in need to seek what is best and escape the worst in this invisible dimension is born in us. Every next moment presents a choice between what we believe is good and evil. It’s how we decide to seek pleasure and avoid pain which is the standard in every area of human involvement, first with self, then others and then the physical environment. All choice is moral. We find our basic need to ‘fit in’ emotionally and physically is moral and demands constant attention whether we want to or not.

Third, religion. Now comes the rub. Religion. We have another unseen need and that is to believe in something that puts our self-awareness into a logical thinking structure to order our belief, our trust and our faith. This is another basic need. But if we look carefully at that need it is not met by a structure but the influence of a person, not through a religion but in a relationship and not by a distant figure but a living experience. It always comes down to a believable person with a heart who lives what they believe.

Religion is man’s attempt to give the mind, the heart and the spirit a way of navigating the unseen dimension. So we need therefore to look at that internal need to satisfy the longing of the mind, the yearning of the heart and the thirsting of the spirit. What is as plain as the nose on your face is we can’t do anything about our situation. The appeal to intuition is self-deception. It’s another step in avoidance. Until there is some kind of revelation from outside ourselves there is no hope.

Man can never satisfy himself with religion because religion is the avoidance of the obvious. It doesn’t satisfy that one need above all needs, to be saved from the lonely imperfection that greets us everyday, the unseen reality of our spiritual instability, an indifferent world, the lack of recognition, the fears of the unknown, the uncertainty of what might happen, the insecurities of our health, our mortality, our powerlessness and lack of control over circumstance. The obvious fact, the obvious reality, the obvious truth is we need someone who can save us, save our mind, save our heart and save our spirit to bring balance to our being and stability to our every next moment. We need someone who has been through the finality of death, maneuvered the invisible alone with all its uncertainty and fears and emerged unscathed. We need someone whose perfection in thought, heart and spirit has arisen above the cloudy darkness of our broken humanity. That someone can relate and bond himself to us personally, directly and perfectly. The obvious person is Jesus who brings logical belief for the mind, trust for the heart and faith for the spirit.

We are not talking about religion. We are talking about a real person and the experience we have with Him. He is a mentality, an attitude and spirit balancing pathway from the imperfection within called sin to perfection without that leaves no doubt and grows day by day. It’s an adventure of discovery from the source of the universe, God Himself. Again the obvious gifts of a mind to think, a heart to trust and a spirit to have faith is built into us from birth. It simply all depends in whom you are willing to place those built in gifts. Jesus simply makes sense. It’s really as plain as the nose on your face.

Col.1:15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.