Out and About 2

[HKHaugan]

OK---again---repeat after me---“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.  We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”  And if you ask me what a spiritual being is and what a human experience is I will tell you.  It is this simply: we come from a spiritual dimension and live in a physical one.  This is God’s revelation to us in Scripture.   It is in God’s Word that understanding finds its home.  It is there definition is born and the thoughts of God become known so that we can redirect our thinking.

 

First, the very concept of being a person is a spiritual idea in a spiritual mind in a spiritual self-consciousness who is spiritually prompted to say ‘I am.’  This makes each of us a part of a larger spiritual dimension of invisible hearts, minds, spirits and forces.  Our spiritual being came from the spiritual reality of a spiritual God from whom all existence, spiritual and physical, came into being (Gen.1).  Humanity is spiritually created and each of us was in the spiritual mind and heart of God before Creation (Gen.1:26).  Being spiritual therefore, precedes the physical universe.  That is why we are first spiritual beings.  Everyone we see is a spiritual being regardless of what they think, believe or act like. 

 

Second, to have a human experience is to know one’s self first as an image of God, who secondly, is living in a human body.  Each of us is God’s idea, a spiritual person, spiritually unique and individual, living in a physical body by God’s will and plan.  Being human is our personal part and purpose in the physical dimension.  We are called by God to live our spiritual self-consciousness in a physical body to demonstrate our relationship with God and to live in Spirit directed relationships with others like us. 

 

Third, for us as believers in Jesus, ‘spiritual’ is to identify all that is unseen.  But unseen as spoken very specifically in terms of good and evil, sin and righteousness, right and wrong, light and darkness, faith and fear and knowledge as opposed to ignorance.  Immediately we want to again maintain the difference between religion and relationship.  Religion is man’s attempt to understand and respond to what is unseen.  Relationship is what God has given man to understand Him and the reality He has created. 

 

Fourth, sin is the spiritual malady that separated us from God.  The evidence is there.  The very fact that we have to be reminded of who we are, what we are and why we are shows our separated aloneness in the visible dimension and our search for personal meaning in the invisible.  Sin keeps us in the invisible wilderness of confusion, self-protection, fear and pride.  Our thinking, our trust and our spirit are derailed by self-centeredness.  When we operate in sin we desensitize our spiritual being and infect our environment.  Only in Christ can we be disinfected through asking for and receiving forgiveness.  Then we can restore our spiritual environment, which leads to the restoration of our physical environment.

 

Fifth, living in a two-dimensional reality is not easy.  It is contains both the seen and unseen, the visible and the invisible, the mind and the body all of which is a combined function of the physical and the spiritual.  The problem arises when our sin rambunctiously distorts how we perceive both.  Sin leads us to focus on the visible at the expense of the invisible.  We don’t consider its long-term impact.  That lives out the song that says, “Let the devil take tomorrow…” which he will do.  If we are willing to operate only in terms of what we can see we become slaves to acquiring what give us comfort and pleasure and avoids conflict.  Then it’s all about the car, the house, the clothes and the visible status they give me in the eyes of others.  That out-of-balance life results in living only for the moment.  Extend that dynamic in politics, economics, education and relationships.  What you have in the end is death the moment a temporary goal is accomplished.  After that, nothing!  If the spiritual dimension is avoided there is nothing left but death.  It is not only physical death, it is spiritual death as well.  This is why Paul helps us to recognize that the wages of sin is death (Rom.6:23).

 

Sixth, choosing and deciding apart from God’s Spirit direction will cause us to charge deeper into confusion and aloneness.  There is no question that when we look at worldwide religion (man’s attempt to understand the invisible all around him) we see desperation at work. Mankind develops rules, dogmas, theories and practices to appease out of fear what he can’t see.  He struggles to set a system of ethics he can control in order to satisfy the deep need to be good as opposed to evil.  It’s an internal struggle externally conflicting.

 

How do we navigate the unseen?  It’s always a question of being right as opposed to wrong, finding a place for the balance of emotion, intellect, individual purpose and their proper physical expression.  That balance, that perfect balance and stability, is found in Jesus.  It is by faith in Him that the balance God intended is restored in us.

 

Seventh, there is an easy way out that satisfies for a moment. It’s called denial. The atheist mindset is primarily living out the psychological dynamic of denial.  Denial is the refusal to accept the reality of what is happening around us.  Atheism is the religion of denial, the belief in not believing and trusting only in one’s self.  It is a spiritual statement to exalt the self, which is the essence of sin thus the religion of sin.  It is so easy to say the spiritual dimension and its invisible conclusions don’t exist but alas, the entire mental process with its reality of motivation, drive, incentive, the desire to know and accomplish are spiritual, real and dominate human behavior.  The very words I am writing, their motivation and expression, are sourced in the invisible mind, trusted as a method in the unseen heart and are the unseen inspiration for outward action in faith.

 

There is no human activity that can separate itself from religion whether it be a business structure, a philosophy, a club or any organized grouping.  By definition its foundation is invisible and its process is finally belief, trust and faith putting them to work.   What makes the difference between religion and relationship is that man defines the first and God defines the second.   I hope this gives you some talking room as you move ‘out and about’ in the daily ‘out there’ in the secular world.