GODLINESS and ANIMALNESS

Maybe you’ve heard that according to the Bible we were made in the image of God? What does this mean? And perhaps more importantly: What in our lives today is godly? And what in our lives is not godly or ungodly? 

When we choose whether to engage in a certain activity or not, it may be wise to ask ourselves: Am I acting in a divine or animalistic way? This is one of the ways that we can use to discern how to apply what the Bible says to our own lives. 

It’s also one way to make the Biblical teachings make sense. What do I mean by this? Well, I’ve been noticing how it’s not always obvious why the Bible or Jesus in particular says a certain thing or sets a certain example. But, looking at the bigger picture, I’ve been able to see that it has been good for me. And this is important: The Bible doesn’t say that we should do some things, abstain from others, adopt a certain attitude or follow a certain example just because it pleases God. It says what it says because what it says is good for us. If we look at the Bible as a rulebook that we need to follow to avoid punishment or get rewarded, we are missing the whole point. And for the record, I don’t believe in hell, even though I don’t rule it out completely either. All I’m saying is that I don’t think that the Bible should be viewed either as a threat or as a set of rules that hinder us from enjoying life. 

At the root of godliness and animalness is the question of free will. As far as I know, humans are the only beings with freedom of choice. Animals act according to their nature, to their instincts. They often act out of love, but it is not a love that they choose. 

This means that whenever we are acting mindlessly and just follow our impulses, we are choosing animalness. Or rather, we let animalness guide our lives because we do not make a conscious choice. 

Here I would like to add a small note: This does not mean that if we are not super strict with ourselves, we are acting like animals. This is about making conscious choices. And making conscious choices includes being kind to ourselves. And sometimes, being kind to ourselves means that we allow ourselves to indulge in a bad habit that we at the moment feel is too hard to break. But making conscious choices also means to be ready to let go of one’s vices as soon as it feels as if it is in one’s power. 

Choices or the act of not making choices of course also affects us. Acting like animals does something to us. We become a little less free. A little more ruled by our instincts. And the reverse is also true. The more we embrace our divine nature, the more we move away from our instinct driven selves. 

This is one of those interesting paradoxes of being human. The more restrictions we place upon ourselves, as long as it’s the right restrictions, the more free we become.

We don’t see many things that are right in front of us until they are identified and labelled. So it is with the division between animalness and divinity. Once the distinction is made, as long as we don’t forget about it, we cannot help but seeing it. And the more we learn, the more responsibility is placed on our shoulders. And the more responsibility we can take on, the richer and freer life becomes. But it also becomes harder.

Knowing that we can approach our choices in life from an animalistic or godly place is a heavy burden if we take this knowledge seriously. But it is a burden that we have to take on if we wish to be free. Our animal natures inevitably lead to slavery to our instincts. It might be a comfortable and even pleasurable slavery. But no matter how much gold we manage to pour over our cage, the cage will always be a cage.

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Deciding who we want to be PART 1

What I want with this post is to encourage you to think a bit about who you are, who you want to be, what you fill your life with and whether this represents who you truly want to be or not. I sort of had a rude awakening a few years back, when I realized how much of my life that was not really me. And I can hardly be alone in this. Yes, I know that ultimately I’m none of these things. I know that deep inside we are simply love and everything else is just add-ons. But knowing this, I don’t think that it can hurt to make more conscious choices with regards to our attitudes and what we fill our lives with. Besides, whether we do it consciously or not, we make choices all the time. 

I think that the best way to approach the question of identity, is to have some conscious sense of it, without being attached to it or confusing it with who one truly is.

I will drop a part of this series now and then. I of course want to do something other than just talk about who I want to be here. But since thinking deeply about who one really wants to be will be quite a project, I don’t think that a series from start to finish, with no other posts in between will be any fun for anyone. Not even for me And I want to take my time to think about these things anyway and not just rush through them. There are so many aspects of life to consider.

It might seem a little strange to still thinking about finding who you are and your place in the world when you’re basically forty. Or maybe it doesn’t. I don’t know. I know that I’m not happy just picking a role and then play it. Why should I even bother thinking about this? Why not just go ahead and live life? Because for most of my life I haven’t really felt like me. It’s not as if I’ve always thought of it this way. But it took a long time for me to take a step back and consider what values I truly treasure. What personality traits I admire. What things in life that truly make me feel happy and fulfilled. What do I truly like in this or that area? When I really listen to my emotions, what to they tell me about my life and my choices? How do I want to look? What kinds of clothes do I like to wear? And, perhaps even more important, what things that I currently fill my life with don’t represent who I truly want to be. What things do I want to let go of?

The thing is that I don’t think that most people really, truly think about these things. I can’t believe that most people’s biggest dream is to work themselves to death so that they can consume, make money off of hurting other people, or drink themselves half-unconscious and make fools out of themselves every weekend. Not that everyone does this. But loads of people do, and these are just some of the most blatant examples. And at least when it comes to getting drunk every weekend, this was something that I myself engaged in when I was younger. And nowadays I see it mostly as just a huge waste of time, health and energy. 

The point that I’m trying to make can be summed up in three questions (forgive me for repeating myself a little bit): Why do we do the things that we do? Do we do them because they are what our hearts desire? Or have our lives and that which they contain sort of just happened to us? 

Photo by Ben Sweet on Unsplash 

Making conscious choices in every moment

What if things could be much easier than we make them, if we just train ourselves to approach life differently? What if we just need to get out of one big pattern, instead of having to fix every little single detail of our lives individually?

I’ve for a long time known that our lives to a large degree operate on autopilot. We live the same or similar scenarios from day to day. And if we don’t take a step back and decide to do something differently, we also respond to them out of habit. Our habits shape our lives. Are we satisfied with our lives? If not, we need to change our habits. But what if we don’t have to look at every habit individually? What if there is one habit that we can train ourselves into, that will automatically change all of our other habits?

I’m talking about the habit of making conscious choices. As with any habit, this habit needs training. When we train ourselves to do something, we repeat it over and over again till we don’t have to think about it anymore. Till we do it out of habit. 

What I’ve come to realize, is that when I make a choice that is not in line with how I want to live my life and who I want to be, it’s often not because of weakness or lack of character. It can be that too. Some desires and cravings are simply too hard for me to resist where I am at the present moment. But more often than not, I’m just not really aware of what I am doing. I’m not aware that I’m making a choice. Instead I just allow life to happen. 

Let’s look at an example. Let’s say that I have lots of work to do. But let’s also say that I need to cook. I feel a strong resistance to doing the cooking, because I’m also a little tired. And I don’t want to pay for a healthy, readymade meal, because if I want a healthy one, it’s more expensive. So, what ends up happening, is that I have the idea that I have to do both, but I end up wasting tons of time and energy because of the resistance that I feel. In the end I pay might miss doing work that would bring in 50 dollars, because I don’t want to pay ten dollars for a readymade meal. Money that I also could use to make healthier choices in the future.

The point is that I believe that there is another perspective here. I can just decide to be as conscious about the choices that I make every moment. Because every moment is a new moment. Life consists of literally and infinite amount of moments, where I have the possibility of making a conscious choice, or just act out of habit. So maybe instead of expending tons of energy on resisting strong desires and cravings, unless, of course, I have a desire for something that would have serious negative consequences for me and others, I can just relax a bit, make the conscious choice of indulging now and then? Maybe I just need to do these things consciously, with intention? Train myself to do everything this way, so that I can choose something differently when I don’t feel these strong urges. I have a strong feeling that many things will fall away on their own if I do this consistently. There will obviously be some difficulty to adjust to this in the beginning, but this difficulty will rather have to do with that my life is adjusted to the old way of doing things.

Photo by Simon Wilkes on Unsplash