Monthly Archives: November 2011

YES, HE is Talking to YOU! (continued)

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

We have completed 150 posts now on this blog about the Words of Jesus and we are no where even close to running out of things to say. We have made it through most of the Master’s Parables and some that we call parables which may not be technically so. What is good is that no one owns the rights to Jesus sayings nor does anyone have the right to say that his interpretation is the correct one. Because His words can effect us on so many different levels of understanding there is likely no limit to the number of correct ideas we can get form them. Unfortunately there are interpretations of His words that are, in our opinion, not correct; these exist and are purportedly supported by the scriptures themselves. Much as the Christian world moved through the Middle Ages in religious wars for which they somewhere found scriptural or at least doctrinal support, parts of the church today still finds ways to make totally Unchristian positions right in their own eyes; in fact, many still support wars. Slavery is another of the Unchristian ideas that lived so long in the hearts of well meaning Christians who had convinced themselves that this too was right in the eyes of the Lord. Today we have hatreds and prejudices along so many different lines and much of it practiced by and supported by well meaning Christians who believe that they are doing right and that they are somehow fulfilling the will of the Master.

This is the point that we were making at the end of yesterday’s post and which we called there, deception. Christians, in their doctrines, are ever aware of the power of Satan to deceive them and lead them astray yet so many do not see the more immediate threat which is self deception. This is thinking that what path one follows and what voices one hears are from God and many so boldly believe this is true even when the thoughts and ideas that are ‘from God’ are contrary to His word. There are some who purport to hear from God on the most trivial of matters; matters of carnal enterprise that the Lord or our own Souls would not even notice in our lives. The Lord is concerned with spiritual things and with bringing us, as conscious personalities, out of the bondage of the flesh and of carnal life and not with trying to help us get by better than someone else. How do we know when what we perceive that we hear from the Lord, from the Christ Within, is in reality from that spiritual place? We mentioned three things at the close of yesterday’s post and we should revisit them so that we are clear and that we can share this clarity with others as there are many that are deluded and self deceived. We do not and should not portend that we have all the answers but these things we do know:

• Wisdom From Above: This is what we rely on or should rely on as guidance from God or from our Souls, our Christ Within. It is timely revelation, unexpected insight, inspiration or just a peaceful feeling regarding a life decision that one must make. What is Wisdom? We defined it in previous posts as: The quality of being wise; knowledge, and the capacity to make due use of it; knowledge of the best ends and the best means; discernment and judgment; discretion; sagacity; skill; dexterity¹. This is mans definition and it is good to understand it as the use of worldly knowledge but there is little that is divine here as the knowledge that we use can be good or it can be otherwise. The Apostle James tells us of the Wisdom from above and contrasts it for us against the Earthly wisdom. James draws a hard and fast line between above and below and in this we should see that there is a middle ground that he is not addressing; his point is to be able to identify that Wisdom from Above. He says: “Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? let him shew out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom. But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth. This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish. For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure , then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.” (James 3:13-17). So do we have revelation or insight, inspiration or peace about a situation that does not measure against these ideas? then it is likely not from above, not from God and not from our Christ Within.  We should remember too  the Quote of the Day that we have used twice (In the Words of Jesus parts 100 and 145) to help us to differentiate the ideas of Wisdom from Above and worldly wisdom; much like its counterpart of Love, Wisdom is a complex issue and a complex word. The Apostle Paul says: “Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness“. (1 Corinthians 3:18-19). Again we see here the caution on self deception and the importance of ever measuring the source of what we may consider Wisdom.                                                                                                                                                               When we speak of Wisdom we would be remiss to not show the spiritual side of it. When this Wisdom is what we have, it is from Above. When this is what flows into our consciousness then we are truly on the Path to God. Wisdom speaking says: I love them that love me; and those that seek me early shall find me. Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors. For who so findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the LORD. But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death. (Proverbs 8:17, 34-36). The whole of this chapter 8 is on Wisdom and should be read; in these writings of Solomon we can see in that Wisdom is, as is the Christ, with God before the foundations of the world and that in many ways Wisdom can be likened to Christ as can Love. Both are potencies of the Son of God; aspects of God Himself.

• Right Thoughts can be seen as those thoughts that result in the Wisdom from Above. In the Light of the Soul that comes into our conscious personalities when we seek it as men, comes the Right Thoughts of which we can say are the measure of the nature of all that we think to do in life. What are these? Paul tells us that” whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things” (Philippians 4:8). These we can consider Right Thoughts. The lexicon and Strong’s tell us that lovely is to mean acceptable or pleasing^1, 2 and Vincent tells us that the word honest should be translated as honorable which gives it a better sense; he also tells us that of good report be interpreted as sounding well and fairspeaking which word gives a better idea of Paul’s intent. Of virtue and praise Vincent tells us that they should be viewed together as kindred words; he tells us that Paul avoids the word virtue except here so as to leave off thinking in terms of any moral virtue of the flesh and thereby the praise it receives. Vincent refers us to his notes on 2 Peter 1: 3, 5 to see Paul’s idea here and tells us that virtue is to be seen as vigorous energy toward God the whole idea being to not let the carnal ideas of virtue have any sway in our thinking⁴.  We have likely confused the idea a bit here but it is important to see the words as they were intended especially with the worldly ideas of virtue. Things that are True, honourable and just, things that are pure and acceptable and of fairspeaking and if ther be True vigorous energy toward God and praise toward God, think on these things. Now this is a simple saying by Paul up front but when we try to gauge our thoughts and our actions and what we say against this list we will truly find out the measure their rightness.

So then first we have the measure of the Wisdom that we perceive, whether it is coming from God or from the Christ Within and then we have the measure of the resultant thoughts; this should do it? Probably not because we still have many points of deception regarding the above two points. Even with the cautions, we can still deceive ourselves by thinking that what we have in Wisdom and thought do meet these criteria. What then is next? what can we do? We still have the measure that the Master gave to us and on which is the ultimate judgement. before we get to the Master’s words, let us look at one more entry by Paul; this one goes much overlooked as to the reality of what it says and in the understanding of what it is that a man sows. He says: “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting“. (Galatians 6:7-8). Every deed that we do, every action; every thought that we entertain and we act on, is sowing and we generally do know if what we are doing or are thinking on is to the benefit of the flesh or to the benefit of the Spirit.

Now we come to the words of the Master; we do not need all His words to get this idea of knowing that any thing that we think is from Him actually is. We only need to reflect on each thing against these words on Love and GoodWill and Right Human Relations for this is what they are. The Master says:

“The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:29-31). Now this should say it all and we should reflect on these words for in doing this  commandment there is no room for any ill will nor thoughts of the carnal self; “all thy heart” is our entire conscious personality which is only possible when it is being Lighted by “all thy soul” which is accomplished by the focus of our heart on the things of God which is being Lighted by the Soul through “all thy mind“. Then we need to put all that we have into it which is “all thy strength” This is of course a difficult achievement but in doing these things we will be in His Presence and our goal will be accomplished; until then we strive. These words leave out all personality convictions and ideas so that we should see that unless our revelation or inspiration or our insight is one that includes the Love of God, it is likely not from Him. To this we need add the second part of this Greatest of Commandments and that is to “love thy neighbour as thyself“; again, if our revelation or inspiration or our insight is not for the common good, for the good of every neighbour, every man, and not just those we like, then it is likely not from Him.

This does not mean that our thoughts and actions that are not on these lines are bad, there is no judgement for that here; this is only to be seen as a measure as to whether what we believe is from Above, form the Lord and our Souls actually is or if these things are from our personality and from the world. On the latter part, that of judgement as to the rightness of a thing, we can only measure that for ourselves, and we are the only judge of our actions, against His Golden Rule. This Golden Rule can be seen as a measure on both sides of this, the believing and the doing, but it does fall more to the action that we take from what we believe comes from the Lord. It is then another check and a point at which we can stop before we act. The Master says: “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets” (Matthew 7:12). Here we should see the measure of all we do and all that we actively think. Here we should also see our understanding of our Love for ourselves in that we can define it by how we desire to be treated. Here we should see the self appraisal and judgement of what we do and here we should see the pinnacle of GoodWill and our definition for it, LOVE IN ACTION. Here we should also see the timelessness of this of this idea as the foundation of the law and the prophets.

Thoughts and ideas come to us constantly and, depending on our religious bent and the spirituality in our lives, we may believe that they are from our Soul or from our God and the measures put forth above are intended to help us to discern what is the real source. Self appraisal is difficult but it is the only appraisal that we can get honestly if we can see through the pride and the ambition of our lower conscious selves. Without a way to measure we can easily delude ourselves; with a way we can still interpret things in our own way and can still delude ourselves. This is why there are so many measures given to us in scripture so many things against which we can determine the nature of our motives and our actions. The theme of this essay has been about self deception and of this we need to be cautious. There is also the deception that we can get from another and this is dangerous as well and there are two kinds of this that we should see here today. First is being deceived by one who is deceiving himself, who thinks that what he hears and says is from the Lord or from his own Soul. The measures above can suffice to help one to deflect this type of deception by both looking at how it is presented and then measuring it in our selves as once we hear a thing is either becomes our own or we discard it. The second type of deception is that of the “ravening wolves” and of these we are warned by the Master. These are those who for selfish motive deceive us intentionally and of whom the Master tells us that “Ye shall know them by their fruits“. Sometimes this may be hard; as with the tares and the wheat, it may be difficult to tell them apart until we can see the fruit and this involves time. Still then we have the measures above and as we are presented with each thought and each idea we have the opportunity to discard them. With the myriad of differing presentations of God and of Christ we need to be diligent and careful of what we believe and what we profess and the rightness of any thing. Whatever we believe we are hearing from God or from our own Souls or from the preacher in the pulpit, we can measure the accuracy of it according to what measures we have stated above and the many other keys that we can find in scripture.

Note on the Quote of the Day