We live in a world where everyone is trying to get our attention. But few seem to care about us as people. Some do. But when it comes to those that don’t, they at best want to use us to further an agenda that they truly consider noble. At worst, they want to ruthlessly exploit us purely for their own gain. To make it worse, what can be a noble agenda for one person, can be ruthless exploitation for another. It all depends on the person’s character and actual knowledge about the issue at hand.
Here is a little part of my experience: The more I learn about the world, myself and my being in the world, the more confusing I find everything. I bet many of you feel the same way. We don’t know who we can trust anymore. If we’ve started to understand just a little bit of what is really going on in the world, we know that we most definitely cannot trust politicians. Neither can we trust the mainstream media, nor public figures. And those that oppose the world views that are pushed by journalists and politicians for the most part don’t seem trustworthy either.
To me, there is only one way out of this mess. Please tell me if you’ve found another.
To you that don’t believe: I’m not asking you to believe without evidence. I’m only asking you to start paying more attention to your experience and being open to whatever you may find when you do so.
To me, God is not just something that I choose to believe in. To me, the existence of God is absolutely undeniable. It’s my lived reality. But since this knowing comes from personal experience, I cannot prove to anyone that I’m telling the truth. I do, however, believe that this is something that everyone can find out for themselves. That they can find this out by just opening up to the possibility that God might exist and want a personal relationship with us. By hoping that me and all those other countless people throughout history, that believe or have believed, are not just delusional. In this hopeless world, what have you got to lose?
Something I do believe wholeheartedly, is that it’s more reasonable to believe that reality is more than what we can perceive with our five senses, than to believe that this is all reality is. If you look at history, it’s abundantly clear that we’ve never been able to trust what our senses seem to tell us about the world. Why would things be different today?
This is not an argument for the existence of God per se. Just an argument against the idea that matter is all there is. Ultimately, as I said in the beginning, our relationship with our creator is personal. It’s not about reason or rational arguments.
With that being said, we can understand the conditions that we live under and thus gain more clarity. And I believe that, even though we ultimately can always put our trust in God, this is just what many of us have to do. Because there is a battle for our minds happening right now.
One fundamental condition that we live under, which is relevant for the discussion that is to follow is this: We only have access to the contents of our own minds. This is self-evident. And yet, many of us don’t reflect much upon what this means. When I started thinking about this, it changed my whole view of the world and how I relate to it.
All I have access to, is my subjective experience. I cannot even know for sure that what I’m experiencing has any relation to what is going on outside of myself. I of course have to assume this to function in the world and not go crazy. And since I can communicate with others, they can confirm or disconfirm my experience. But I cannot know whether their experience is correct. Neither can I know that other people are telling me the truth about their experience. And to complicate things further, I cannot know that we mean the same things, with the words they use to describe their experience. For the most part, I can know the opposite: that words mean different things to different people.
Yet, truth seems to matter. A lot! We don’t like when people lie or deceive us. We also have emotions attached to many of our beliefs. When we do, we get uncomfortable when someone challenges our beliefs. If we have strong emotions attached to them we might get angry. Especially if we think that we have the arguments firmly on our side.
Let me give you an example of how our perception can become distorted:
Lately I’ve been thinking about when I studied psychology at the university. One subject was: “men that are abusive to their partners”. This was framed as men’s will to dominate women. Because this is what these men said in the interviews. We were given the image of a man that calculating used force to dominate their partner. But what if this is incorrect? These studies said nothing about who these individual men were. What if at least many of these men felt helpless in most areas of life, but tried to dominate the few areas where they could feel powerful? It doesn’t make it any more okay, but it sheds a totally different light on the problem. The problem is no longer dominant men that use force to subjugate women. It instead becomes broken, disempowered men that try to grab on to what little power they can in their lives, in the most dysfunctional, destructive way possible. I would never say that this is always the case. There are of course thoroughly cruel people, that use violence in a cold, calculated way. But what if these are the minority cases?
In other words: We have an event. We have the perpetrator that describes the event. He tells us how he sees what happened. Then we have the researcher that tries to understand what the perpetrator is communicating. The researcher then puts it down in his or her own words. And then we have these findings reproduced by other academics, that include them in their own papers or course literature. Then we finally have classes taught on the subject and students assimilating the information. We have now moved very far away from the actual situations and the people involved in them.
Now comes the interesting and quite frightening part. And the whole reason for this lengthy example: Our identities shape our perception of reality. If I assign a certain label to myself, such as “feminist”, “anti-feminist”, “alt-right”, “ or “anti-racist”, this label will become part of how I interpret and thus describe reality. None of us are immune to this. Labels come with an emotional charge. And while emotions are an important way of understanding reality, if we aren’t conscious of how they shape our thinking, they will inevitably distort our perception. So if someone, in this case a researcher, views information through a distorted filter, he/she will interpret the information in a way that conforms to his/her worldview. Unless he/she can be objective enough to override said worldview.
Our distorted perception works something like this: I will embrace certain information. Then reinforce it in my mind. I do this by thinking about it and what it means. And by discarding other information. I can look for valid ways of dismissing information that I don’t like. Or I can discard it completely without thinking. Or I can distort it so that I can dismiss it. This last way is called a straw man and is called so because a figure of straw is easy to knock down. We often have no problem seeing this way of reasoning in others. But it’s much harder to spot it in ourselves.
In short, we look for information that supports our beliefs. And not only that. We also interpret the information in a way that suppors said beliefs and describe it to others in a way that supports our beliefs. But to us, we are only stating facts.
This is also just one side of it. Now we add streaming services, social media and algorithms to the mix. It is today common knowledge that the algorithms of the biggest streaming services and social media, suggest media based on prior consumption. This means that if you are looking into information that is more right wing, you will see more and more information and perspectives related to this. And the same goes for the left. This has today created two very distinct camps that fiercely oppose each other, even if they in many ways share the same problems and concerns.
This is of grave concern, since this creates more and more animosity between ordinary people. This is by design, since those that truly prey on us want us to fight each other instead of seeing what is really going on. We could wake up from this nightmare and start opposing our captors. Instead we perpetuate the nightmare by hating our neighbor for not sharing our beliefs and hating ourselves for not living up to impossible standards. And since we’re told that religion is the root of all evil, we learn to hate religion as well. This in spite of the fact that godlessness and the sense of meaninglessness that it produces, is arguably the root cause of much of the degeneration of our culture.
While we’re at the subject of those that govern us in the overall framework of perception: The actions of those that govern us don’t seem to make much sense. At least when looked at from the perspective of them representing those that voted them into office. On the other hand, if you start looking at the function of government from a different perspective it start start to make sense. This perspective would be: increasing control and surveillance, and transferring money from the masses into the hands of a wealthy few so that these wealthy few can increase their power.
All of this amounts, in my view undeniably, to something dark on the horizon. Something that is planned and by design. Something that is hidden in plain sight. Something that, once seen, cannot be unseen.
In the storm that is coming, I put my trust in God. Because I know that God exists. And I have to believe and trust that God is who he says he is in the Bible. That he knows and wants what’s best for us. I cannot se where else there is hope to be found.
Ever since I came to believe in God seventeen years ago I’ve immersed myself in religion and spirituality. Since then, I’ve only found more reasons to believe. And even though I’ve found plenty of reasons to doubt what I’ve believed, or change my beliefs, I’ve never found reason to doubt my core faith in a good, almighty creator.
Throughout this time, I’ve not always been a Christian. It’s a faith that I’ve been growing into over the years with a lot of going back and forth, until finally something clicked. Something that began seventeen yeas ago, but came to fruition about six months ago. It can be summed up as an ever growing, inner knowing, followed by a sense of peace and joy, that grows with the knowing.
I believe that we can only take back our sovereignty with the help of God. By reconnecting with our creator. My belief in God and all that it entails is what colors my whole perception of reality. This is the lense that I choose to view the world, myself, other people and my relation to the world and other people through.
The best way of understanding God and his will I have found in the Bible. I choose this lense because I believe it to be absolutely true. I believe the Bible to be the word of God, handed down through ordinary humans. Ordinary humans that were not called primarily because of their moral virtues. For some of them this was part of the reason. But many of them were great sinners. I think that part of the reason why they were chosen, was because God knew that they, sometimes reluctantly, would say yes and then do what needed to be done.
To me, since our reason is so fallible, I think that the question of whether a worldview seems to lead us where we want to go is very relevant. That this question should be taken seriously when we search for the truth.
On this point, the Bible has never failed me, while all other teachings that I have chosen to guide me have done so. What the Bible says may at first seem counterintuitive. But it has always provided me with an accurate analysis of the world and the human condition. This analysis has helped me to break free from much of the unconscious programming of my mind. That which the world has instilled in me without me knowing it. Without me having made any conscious choices about it.
The Bible has corrected many of my distorted perceptions. Thus it has helped me to gain clarity in areas such as career, family, dreams, goals, entertainment, sex and social relations. Areas where what has seemed reasonable from a human and our culture’s perspective, has proved to break down my psyche and spirit.
In this darkness that we are now facing, I believe that Jesus is the only truly valid guiding light. The ideal that we should strive for, no matter who we are, what we’ve done or what the world tells us. In my going back and forth, Christianity has never failed me. And I’ve always been led astray when I’ve deviated from it. So the Bible and the person and message of Jesus is where I’m going to put my trust to guide me through the chaos, which is soon to unfold.
But I’m not looking to convince you of anything, even if it might seem that way. What I want you to do, is find out the truth for yourself. And when doing so, it could be good to keep in mind, that ultimately everything is personal experience, i.e. subjective perception. Subjective perception of an objective reality.
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