Healthy, Unhealthy; Dyslexia

This quoted dialog (between Trinity and Neo, Morpheus and Neo) from the first Matrix movie is something that grips me every time I think about it;

“I know why you're here, Neo. I know what you've been doing... why you hardly sleep, why you live alone, and why night after night, you sit by your computer. You're looking for him. I know because I was once looking for the same thing. And when he found me, he told me I wasn't really looking for him. I was looking for an answer. It's the question that drives us, Neo. It's the question that brought you here. You know the question, just as I did. What is the Matrix?”

“I see it in your eyes. You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees because he is expecting to wake up. Ironically, that's not far from the truth. Do you believe in fate, Neo? No. Why not? Because I don't like the idea that I'm not in control of my life. I know *exactly* what you mean. Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know something. What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I'm talking about?”

The ‘splinter in my mind-brain’ is not me wanting to discover what the matrix is, but I am compelled to know the Truth, not my flavor verses yours, and I know truth will stay put only as a concept as long as it is not seen in a relational context, i.e. “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, Jesus said.

What is the relevance of grace-life-health to anyone not seeing their need, didn’t Jesus make it abundantly clear that He came to seek and save that which was lost, and as he put it, ‘It’s the sick-unhealthy ones that are in need of a doctor-physician.’
My wife and I were discussing some of the dynamics of unhealthiness in the story often referred to as ‘The Prodigal Son’.
What I want to do here, is not to establish some hard fast conclusions, but rather to open up the possibility of coloring-thinking outside the lines of our natural inclinations to only believe what we think we see.

My quandary is this, as the story unfolds the younger son who demanded of his father his portion of the inheritance and had gone off to freely squander it ends up in a most deplorable situation, hitting lower than low, a Jewish boy forced to fighting with pigs for his food.
It was in hitting rock bottom that I believe he was being introduced to grace-truth-love. Maybe it was out of this catharsis these thoughts-actions came forth; ‘That brought him to his senses. He said, 'All those farmhands working for my father sit down to three meals a day, and here I am starving to death. I'm going back to my father. I'll say to him, Father, I've sinned against God, I've sinned before you; I don't deserve to be called your son. Take me on as a hired hand.' He got right up and went home to his father.’

What I think I am seeing here in his life are but the beginnings of a realization-revelation of grace. He saw his need!When he got back home everything was not immediately straightened out in his life, his thinking, even though he was unconditionally embraced by his father.

What I think I am seeing here is, what grace started in this life, grace would finish, but it was going to be a process of unparalleled conflict. As grace and love continued to do its transformational work within the soul of this young man is it possible he might discover his true identity, one not founded in or by his failures or is successes?

I don’t see this story being one that has a definite conclusion or ending, maybe it did, but maybe not, the point being that according to what we read in this story there is no indication that older son who stayed home on the farm, ever saw his neediness, there is no indication he saw the plight of his own needy and desperate soul, therefore no need at least at this point in time to have to come to his senses like his wayward brother.
In my opinion grace will be a subject of possible interest to be bantered-discussed amongst those who are curious, but there so called healthiness blinds them from becoming desperate for this Loving doctor of the heart.

Rich

P.S. Here’s an addendum that arose out of a conversation with my wife. We tend to see the enemy of our souls as having infiltrated only the souls of those with obvious imperfections – the unpopular ones, the ‘geeks’, the poor and destitute, etc. This is what I refer to as an ‘overt’ assault. However, what we fail to see is that the enemy equally assaults the souls of those who appear to us to have it all together – the popular guy with loads of friends, the financially stable, the ‘right-living’ types who seem to enjoy more of God’s blessings than the rest of us! However, these folk have been perverted by pride – what I refer to as a ‘covert’ assault. They are the ones Jesus referred to as ‘having no need of a doctor’ because they think that by their own inherent goodness they don’t need grace as much as the other guy. We are so blinded by the worldly view that we fail to see that ALL have suffered soul deformity, in some way or another, at the hands of the enemy of our soul by virtue of our being born in sin and shaped in iniquity. The properties of sin that have produced dyslexia of the soul in all of us blind us to the reality that Jesus has compassion on ALL.

It says that when the young rich ruler came to Jesus asking what he might do to obtain-inherit eternal life, Jesus spoke the Law to him. It says ‘Jesus beholding him, Loved him, and then He spoke succinctly and sharply to his inner most person, which caused him to go away grieved.
Rather than seeing his need, (one of the reasons the law was given was to show us our need, not to condemn us) he thought, seeing as how he had been ‘successful’ in keeping so many of the laws, what was one more, but this one cut to the marrow of his life.
Jesus went on to say how hard it was for those trusting in their riches to know the reality of an identity founded completely in His love alone. He emphasized the impossibility of mans ability to work through this conundrum of trying to serve two masters, but said, ‘With God ALL things are possible’!

Illiteracy: The Raping of the Soul

Are there lepers in the house/family of God today, or is leprosy something strictly confined to and defined by decayed and rotting flesh?

My wife has been in the teaching profession for over three decades and the last dozen years she has been working specifically with junior and senior kindergarten children ranging in age from those going on four to five and six years of age.
In her recent research into the issue of boys' illiteracy (that she has dived into with a passion), the issue of boys' failure to learn to read has revealed some sad statistics, the discovery of which has broken her heart. She has shared some of what she is learning with me.
As I listened to some of her documented research I could not help but see this issue of illiteracy being a living metaphor for something just as real and even more heart breaking.

There is way too much on my heart to even try and capture the explosiveness (gut wrenching) of what I am seeing/sensing regarding the deep seated (stigma) shame, within the body of Christ, the masses of re-birthed people who are as it were illiterate to the true knowledge of the love of God the Father for them!
I am beginning to see with new eyes, looking upon the sea (masses) of illiterate people in much the same way that people must have viewed lepers down through the centuries, but now I realize these illiterate ones shouldn't be shunned at all!

As my wife began to spell out in definite specifics the stigma (mortification-humiliation) attached to a person who is illiterate, I could not help but see my own great need.I’m not talking about learning my A, B C’s, and then learning how to read and write, but a far greater need and that being as it were in a most graphic sense, illiterate to truly knowing (experiencing) the greatness of His love for me.
I am more convinced than ever before, the pandemic plague of shame and humiliation attached to this illiteracy of not knowing the love of God is much like a blood sucking leach draining believers of their vitality, the raping their soul.

There seems to be an unspoken but widely accepted notion within Christendom that if one is still ‘straining and or struggling’ in their walk with the Lord, they have somehow not tapped into what grace truly means; otherwise they wouldn’t be so stressed out and filled with fear.

The subtle ploy that appeals to one’s own ego is to be seen/recognized as one who has risen far above such juvenile antics, of no longer straining or having to struggle with those fears anymore (no longer being illiterate) and who now project an image of unshakable confidence in the love of God. Having learned a little spiritual language, they have no compassion or empathy for those still struggling, but instead set themselves up as teachers and guides to those who just can’t seem to find their way. And what becomes of the poor illiterates? Compared to the ‘enlightened ones’ they feel inadequate and ashamed. They think there’s something wrong with them, otherwise they’d be able to grasp these spiritual truths!

However, Jesus, knowing full well where, why and how we are paralyzed, has tender compassion on the illiterate (which, by the way, is ALL of us). He would never kick a man when he was down! But as a mortal man Jesus was limited – that’s why he was planted in the ground like a grain of wheat so that he might bring forth a multitude of his own seed – with the same propensity for compassion He expressed to those enslaved by their illiteracy.

The extent to which every illiterate believer can experience and offer love and understanding to brothers and sisters as they progress on their own journey of knowing and experiencing God’s liberating love for themselves will go a long way to alleviating their shame.

Rich