Putting things into perspective and letting go of our baggage

Objectively speaking a new year doesn’t mean anything. The meaning of a new year only comes from the meaning we give it, individually and collectively. And yet, the power of a fresh start should not be underestimated.

When I started caring about my life and thus started the journey that I’m still on today I was at the bottom. I was a lazy, immoral emotional wreck that only looked out for number one. Today I still have a mess to clean up because of this. I still have a lot of bad habits and negative attitudes that I need to get rid of. And I have a financial situation that, while not being totally terrible, leaves much to be desired. 

You could say that my life was on auto-pilot, while I was living under the illusion of conscious choices. I think that this is part of the human condition that we are currently in. And even when we start understanding that this is how our lives work, much will still continue in the same manner. Because as soon as we stop truly being aware we fall asleep again. Then that pesky auto-pilot comes on. You just need to observe yourself a bit throughout the day to see that this is the way things work.

This has also, most definitely, been true for humanity as a collective, probably ever since we’ve been able to talk about “humanity as a collective” in any meaningful way. This does not work anymore. And let me say this: I don’t think that we are going to continue on this road for much longer. But if we do, global tyranny will be the result.

Since we’re a collective of individuals, it’s up to each and everyone of us to wake up, become conscious of ourselves and the world around us, and then take on as much responsibility as we can handle. What this means will differ depending on where we are in life. But more or less all of us fall short of what we could be.

So, how could I, a fairly intelligent person, be so blind to what was right in front of me? How could I, instead of looking at myself and my shortcomings, time and time again point out the faults of others?

The truth is that before finding God I didn’t care. Because I saw everything as pointless anyway. But even after I started caring, I kept on acting egoistic even though my intent was the opposite. I kept on making excuses for behaviors that I should have recognized as wrong. Why? 

I think that I hadn’t taken a serious look at myself. And at the same time, I managed to see myself as intellectually superior to others.

I hadn’t put my actions or attitudes under any real scrutiny. I lived in a confused fantasy world with a distorted reality perception. A few ingredients in this soup were: a mixture of wishful thinking, arrogance, pride, an inflated ego that stemmed from a low self-esteem, an unfounded sense of superiority and tons of other garbage. I was also not very good at putting myself in other people’s shoes. This last thing is, by the way, something that I’m still struggling with. And I’m hardly alone in this. A lack of empathy seems to be one of the many social diseases that plague our modern world. Especially when it comes to how our own words and actions affect other people.

What I’ve come to realize is that there are rights and wrongs. Very clearly so. And if we want to learn more about this, I believe that the best source is the New Testament of the Bible.

If we act in a way that seems beneficial to us, but is harmful to others and the world, somewhere it will also hurt us. It may give us wealth and pleasure, but it will inevitably destroy our character. For people with a conscience, it will inevitably also cause anxiety. And it certainly does not give us a sense of meaning. Furthermore, it also damages our relationship with other people and ultimately with God, no matter if we believe in him or not. 

These are all harms that can be hidden fairly well. Both from ourselves and others. But they are most certainly there.

I think that almost all of us have things in our lives that we need to change, even if we’re not overall dissatisfied with out lives. But if you’re dissatisfied with where your life is today, the best thing is probably not to be angry with yourself for allowing things to become that way. You didn’t ask for the world to be what it is. You didn’t know that what the world sold you was a junk pile of lies. “This is how it is”, the world said. “This is what’s important and these are the keys to a happy, fulfilled life.” The world took your survival instinct and turned it into a tool of destruction. And it usually takes some sort of crisis for us to become aware of it.

Maybe you didn’t know what you were doing when you created whatever mess you’re in. But it’s still up to you to clean it up. No one is going to do it for you and all of the anger and complaining in the world won’t change that fact. And life is not going to get any better just because you manage to convince someone that you’re not to blame for your situation.

In one sense, we need to accept that we are never going to be perfect. In this sense, we need to treat ourselves with kindness and compassion when it comes to our shortcomings. Because failure to live up to what we could be is a necessary component of life. Even for the greatest among us. And in the end, whatever we cannot do ourselves we need to lay in the hands of God.

That being said, we must never allow acceptance to turn into resignation. Especially not in these troubled times, with global tyranny being a real threat that looms in the horizon. No matter who and where we are, we need to be able to stand as strong as we are capable of.

When we think of what we want to let go of, I think that it’s worth engaging in some serious thought about who we want to become. Who we are in relation to who we say that that we want to be. And why we want to be who we say that we want to be. 

We probably don’t want to replace everything in our lives. Some have less baggage. Others have more. But no matter what, there is another truer self inside us that is waiting to be born. One that comes through in those sides of us that feel true. That don’t just seem created by our experiences, circumstances and automatic reactions to them. I know that you can feel this true version of yourself. The one that is buried underneath the various layers of falseness that have been created by being both in the world and of it.

I would propose that we need to rethink our ideal if the honest answer to why we want to be who we want to be, is that we want to be admired by others. I would also caution against making any type of “happy” into some sort of end goal.

Now, let me be the first one to admit that I’m not very good at following Jesus. There are still huge remnants inside of me, of the person I no longer wish to be. There are sides of me that are selfish, moody, judgmental and fearful. Just to name a few things.

Yet, I think that the best way of doing this self-inventory, is in light of the ideal of Jesus. Because, even though it’s in practice impossible to live up to such an ideal, why aim for anything less? Jesus knew that the only way to true freedom and happiness, was in the obedience to God and the service to others. This is of course not what the world tells us. But is the ways of the world making us feel free and happy?

A little New Years greeting

2022 has been a terrible year, for the world, for me personally and for my wife. But, for us, it has also been a year of much growth. I feel that it has been a year where many problems have been brought to the surface. In a way where we couldn’t ignore them any more. When this happens, you either give up or deal with them to the best of your ability. The first option has been tempting on many occasions. 

It’s been a rather even distribution of pains that I have caused myself, or we have caused together, and pains that have been beyond my/our control. 

Among the things that have happened, we’ve had a situation that I will not discuss here, we’ve lost a beloved cat, we’ve continued struggling financially and I’ve come face to face with a lot inside myself that I don’t like.

In this context it’s relevant to ask both if things really are beyond one’s control, and how much free will is involved in one’s bad decisions. This could be of particular interest now, as this is the time of the year when we start anew and make resolutions to better ourselves. 

On the one hand, we may feel that many things just happen to us, we are victims of circumstances and so on. But it’s rare that the situations have nothing whatsoever to do with poor decisions. Even if they might not be a direct consequence of them. If, for example, our car breaks down, it’s usually not something that we had no way of foreseeing. Maybe we bought a cheap, used car. Maybe we couldn’t afford a better car because we made poor financial decision in the past. Or we couldn’t afford to have that engine noise checked out, also because of poor financial decisions in the past.

Furthermore, if we have solid ground beneath our feet, we can usually handle what comes our way. But if we don’t, many problems turn into disasters. 

On the other hand, we wouldn’t make bad decisions if we knew that they were bad decision. At least not if we could help ourselves. Furthermore, how clearly we view our behavior and how much willpower we have to change, seems to be determined by factors beyond our control to a large degree. Something usually has to happen, that puts things into a new perspective. 

I could write several books about the problem of free will, so I will leave the discussion with this: I’ve gotten into the habit of observing myself quite a bit and I’ve done a fair bit of self-examination. And I still constantly catch myself lying to myself and act in ways that go against what I’ve intended. I’ve learned that the human capacity for self-deception is endless. This is where I’m at. But many people go through their whole lives without really making conscious choices. Where it’s obvious to anyone but themselves, that the reasons for their actions are entirely different from what they think. 

So, do you truly know why you do what you do? Do your actions have the consequences that you intend? Would you rather be right or have the best possible outcome? How much of your behavior is driven by ego?

As we enter the new year, I wish to be more conscious of the choices that I’m making and why I’m making them. I want to act less from the ego and more in alignment with God’s will. To let go of the lower parts of me while strengthening the higher.

My hopes for humanity are similar to what I personally aim for. I hope that more people start to wake up to the fact that God is the only authority that we need. That more people start taking responsibility for their actions, rather than looking to people in power (whether they are our elected rulers or those that are pulling their strings) for solutions and guidance. 

Handing over power to someone else has never worked before, so why should it now? The world is in crisis and things are not always as they appear. As a matter of fact, I would say that almost nothing is as it appears. But in all of this we still have God and each other. We don’t have to believe the same things or have the same opinions in order for us to come together and start building something better. The idea that we all have to agree to get along is dividing us, when we could face our challenges together.

There are people that want things to be this way. They want this so that we continue feeling powerless. Because if we feel powerless, we are likely to accept their solutions instead. We are likely to hand over our power to them instead. A power that really only belongs to God. 

In this state we are crippled. Instead of trying to force others to change, we can ask God what we need to change in ourselves. And instead of imposing our will on other people, we can do our best to work together with them. To think of how we can be the kinds of people that others would want to cooperate harmoniously with, rather than make others do what we want them to.

So, in spite of everything that has been over the past few years, I do have some hopes for 2023. Because I don’t think that I’m the only one that, during the past year, has become acutely aware of all of the things that don’t work and that I don’t want in my life. 

But it’s up to each and every one of us. Will we take responsibility for our lives, rise above all that is small and petty inside of ourselves, strive for what is truly good and noble and thus take our power back?

Happy New Year!

A little Christmas Greeting

I thought that I’d take a break from my regular blogging this Saturday, since it’s Christmas and most people probably have better things to do than to read blogs. But I thought that I’d just put a small piece together.

I want to begin by saying merry Christmas to all of my family and friends. Thank you for having put up with me throughout the years. You mean more to me than I often show.

Now, it’s easy to get cynical about Christmas these days. Just like it’s easy to get cynical about many things these days. You can take the fun and beauty out of most things if this is what you want.

If you want to, you can choose to look at Christmas as a holiday of drunkenness, gluttony, loneliness and empty bank accounts. You can point out that Jesus was almost certainly not born on the 25^th of December. And so on.

Or you can choose to reflect upon what Christmas represents, no matter when Jesus was born. That Christmas represents not just the birth of Jesus, but the beginning of the rebirth of the whole world and the whole of humanity. 

You look at Christmas as a time when you can allow yourself to take a break from an often hectic life and spend time with your loved ones, without feeling guilty about not being productive.

When pondering the significance of gifts, you can think about the gift of life that God has given you. You may think of the gifts that await you in the future. And you can think of the fact that God is himself the greatest gift of all. You can think of how this is reflected in the giving of gifts between people. Because it is the giver and not the gifts that is of true importance to us. We do well to remember this.

I’m not always good at seeing the best in the world and the people in it. But I want to be better at it. Not in the delusional way, where I tell myself that everything is fine when it really isn’t, while pretending that my problems don’t bother me, even though it’s obvious that they do.

No, I mean to see all the good that is in my life and the world. To not make more than I have to of my problems. To not ruminate on them if I can help it. To not let the joys just fly by while my mind is occupied with the past or the future. To instead take time to appreciate and be thankful for all my blessings.

This is where I want my focus to be. ghggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggn6767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767676767jhnWhat do your eyes see when they view the world?

Merry Christmas!

Have Faith!

Everything is in God’s hands. EVERYTHING is in God’s hands! In these troubled times it’s so easy to forget that. That there is a plan. That no matter how things look on the surface, both on a global and personal level, ultimately everything is going to be okay. This is what the Bible promises. This is what many of the Bible stories point to. For example when Moses parts the sea, when David slays Goliath, when Daniel and his friends walk into the fiery furnace, when Peter walks on the water with Jesus or when Jesus calms the raging storm. No matter what happens, God is always there with us. Even when the apostles were martyred, they knew that they were going home.

With this I don’t mean to trivialize the suffering that is happening in the world. But if we have faith, we know that the suffering does not take place in an ultimately meaningless world. We know that there will be redemption for those who suffer.

We all have our proverbial demons (and maybe some literal ones as well). One of mine is worries about money. I know perfectly well that my worries are very small in comparison to what many people go through. Me and my wife can still pay our bills and put food on the table. And we have a safety net of people around us if something goes seriously wrong.

Yet, when everything gets more expensive I worry. And I’m imagining all kinds of scenarios where we have to freeze and don’t have food, because we don’t have a solid financial ground to stand on. This is not to have faith. Faith is to do one’s best with what one has and leave the rest to God. Faith is to look boldly at the uncertainty of the future and say: “thy will be done”. 

What I have control over, is what I do with my relationship with my creator and the people around me. I have control over what kind of person I become through my daily choices. I can control what kind of character I develop.

Luckily this is where we can find our strongest foundation. Not in material possessions or riches. Our strongest foundation is built on where we stand with God, who we are and the people we surround ourselves with. 

By focusing on my little worries, I both distrust God and display a lack of proper care. 

What do I mean by “lack of proper care”?

Let me give you an example. Right now, billionaires all over the world are building bunkers, that are built to protect and maintain a comfortable lifestyle during a crisis. In other words, in the face of a global disaster, they think primarily of saving themselves and their families. 

But in light of what often runs through my mind at this time, am I so different? Are you? What are the chances that we would do the same if we could? 

Proper care means to focus on the greater picture. What at least I instead often focus on, is how everything affects me personally. How the state of the world interferes with my own goals, plans, dreams, wishes and desires. This while I ought to focus on what God wants with my life.

This leads to some tough questions: Is my life focused around what God wants or what my ego wants? Do my thoughts, words and actions match my answer, if I’m being honest with myself? 

I know that my answers to these questions are far from satisfying. But a serious attempt at being honest with oneself is at least a start.

I believe that faith is crucial here. Faith in that we don’t live in a cold, indifferent world where the future is completely uncertain. Faith in that there is a meaning to everything that is happening. Faith in that everything is in God’s hands. Faith that whatever happens, we can still trust God in the end. Faith that God holds us and preserves us, even in death.

What God asks of us, is to be okay with uncertainty. With not knowing everything in advance. To not let the world fool us into believing that there is no hope beyond politics, economics and science. To trust that whatever comes our way, ultimately it’s for the best. To truly believe in a life and a reality beyond this one, not just with our intellects, but with our whole being. To truly believe in God. That God is a personal God, that cares intimately for us. That he has a plan for everything that is happening right now. That God wants a relationship with us and that, in his time and not ours, he wants to give us everything. To allow these beliefs to shine through our thoughts, words and actions.

Have faith! 

Behavioral patterns, worldviews and faith

Our world today is insanity on steroids. And most of us are more or less guilty of allowing for it to be this way. In this instance, guilt does not imply intent. In this case it is often the opposite of intent. 

One well known that quote about insanity is that it’s “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result”. Now we do the same things that have been proven to make things worse. And we do them more and faster, over and over again. We do them more and faster while somehow expecting thing to get better. Until we lose hope completely and just keep doing things out of habit while we wait for death.

The good news is that there is a rather clear way out of this mess. Our lives, both on an individual and collective level, are the sum total of the circumstances we are born into, plus our thoughts, feelings, words, beliefs and actions. And all of these things go together. 

Sure, things happen that we have no control over whatsoever, which are devastating beyond repair. But these things are a very small minority. For the most part, when tragedy strikes, it could either have been avoided all together, or we could be in a position where we could cope with it enough to get by,

So if life isn’t what we want it to be, this is where we have to look. At our beliefs, thoughts, feelings, words and actions. Today I’m going to focus on our beliefs. Because this is where it starts. Our beliefs are the lense that we view reality through and depending on what we believe, it will have a tremendous effect on our lives.

We can take a very prevalent belief in today’s society. If we believe that life ultimately is pointless, devoid of higher meaning, this will be reflected in what we think, feel, do and say. If you think that life isn’t worth taking seriously anyway, you might as well stay an infant till the day you die and waste your life on fastfood and mindless entertainment. 

This was where I was heading in my late teens and early twenties. I remember quite clearly when this destructive philosophy started to get hold of my mind. When I was seventeen I read The Satanic Bible by Anton Lavey. For those that don’t know, on the surface it’s ego-affirming atheism, even though I today believe that there is something more sinister behind its content. 

I was an atheist and the idea that there are no such things as right and wrong or higher meanings appealed to me. I found it to be the logical conclusion of the belief that we seize to exist completely when we die. If this would be the conditions that we all live under, I still can’t see how it could be any different. Luckily I know better today.

If you want to know how much beliefs affect us, this whole single worldview shaped how I dressed, the music I listened to, what friends I hung out with and what activities I chose to engage in. And all of these things reinforced each other. And my choices twenty years ago still have an impact on my life today. Because even when you find abundant proof that God exists, that life doesn’t end with death and you therefore want to turn your life around, it’s not that easy. I’m glad that I didn’t form any addictions, except maybe occasional overeating. But I have an overwhelming load of habitual ways of thinking and acting that are not easy to let go of. 

Have you ever noticed what happens when you try to act against an ingrained pattern? Anxiety will rise up inside. You will feel a tremendous pull to stay where you are and act like you’ve always acted. And this is if you’re lucky enough to realize that you are acting out a pattern that you wish to change. Many times you will just unconsciously assume that “this is how reality is and this is the only possible response to it.” 

What I’ve found, which is something that I talk about a lot on this blog, is that we are not in control of our lives. Not left to ourselves and our own reason. Our thoughts may fool us that we are making rational decision, while in reality we are not.

This line of thought is what I will expand on in the next blog post.

Photo by Daniele Levis Pelusi on Unsplash

Speaking MY truth?

There is a lot of talk within New Age circles about speaking one’s truth. But the issue that I’m going to talk about here is really an issue about how we view truth in general. I believe that there is one important question that we need to ask ourselves in this context. One that has big ramifications: Do I sincerely search for the truth, or am I looking for the “truth” that pleases me the most? This, I believe, is not a question that should be taken lightly. Because it’s very possible to say that we want the truth, but unconsciously look for the “truth” that doesn’t require us to change or put in any effort. How do I know? Because I’ve believed many such “truths” throughout my life.

As I’ve said in other posts, I believe that in the extraordinary times that we are living in, it’s important that we talk to each other. We don’t have to agree on everything. But in open, humble, friendly discussions where we assume the best about each other, we might be able to find out the truth together, in areas where it’s still unclear. There are people in the world with a lot of power that want to hurt us. And therefore it’s important that those of us that are waking up to this fact stand together. This is the reason why I want to have a conversation with the New Age community, while at the same time lifting issues that I believe concern everyone.

As with so many other ideas, “my truth” can mean more than one thing. This was sort of implied in the question I posed a moment ago. And as with so many other ideas, it can create a lot of confusion when we think that we talk about the same thing, while in reality we’re not. 

I firmly believe that the truth is to be found in the Bible, even if I think that we have yet to find it out completely. The concept of progressive revelation is quite firmly established within theology and other forms of biblical interpretation, so this is to be expected. This basically means that much of what was written in the Bible, was meant to be revealed in the future. Prophecies is an obvious example. But I also believe that many of Jesus’ sayings have an esoteric side. Some of this has been revealed to mystics. But I believe, as other things about the special times that we are living in are being revealed, more and more people will understand more and more these teachings.

The Bible is also a masterwork of statements with multiple meanings. For example: “The truth shall set you free” (John 8:32) can mean spiritual truth. But it can also mean that there is a natural law where lies enslave us, both on a personal and collective level. It can also mean that when we confess our secrets, something happens. We are no longer burdened by carrying the weight alone. Observing the effect this statement has when put into practice, is one way of discovering that there is a spiritual reality underlying our lives in the physical world.

This also highlights another issue. Are we talking about factual claims about our physical world? Factual claims about science, politics or standards for beauty? Or are we talking about the fundamental nature of reality? Or about moral truth? I’m talking about all of these things and I believe that when spiritual truth is the foundation, all of these things come together. And to make it clear, I’m an objectivist when it comes to all of them. I will explain more about what this means in a moment.

Another thing that I want to make clear, is that I don’t believe for one second that we have the right to interpret the Bible any way we want to. If something is there, it’s there for a reason. And neither science nor cultural norms are valid reasons to discard it. The only valid reason I can find, is when circumstances change in such a way that some particular statement does not apply anymore. And to be clear, I’m talking about actual, factual circumstances. Not our knowledge about the world or human nature. Or what we now think that we know. What qualifies as science within the soft sciences today, for example, is tainted by ideology. This distorts the lenses through which researchers view the objects of study. And much of what is produced in the universities today should be viewed as propaganda. Even though the propagandists often don’t realize that they are engaged in propaganda. 

So, where am I going with this? In the beginning I talked about how “my truth” can mean two different things, which is something that I’ve been trying to illustrate with the prior discussion. On the one hand, it can be the truth the way I see it, when humbly doing my best to understand it as objectively as possible. This view acknowledges that there is such a thing as “objective truth”, while also acknowledging that when it comes to most contested matters, we may be wrong in our beliefs. We try, to the best of our ability, to take into account as many factors as possible, that distort our perception, when we try to figure out the truth.

The second view is that there are no absolute truths and that therefore everyone carries their individual truths. This view means that we are free to believe what we want and no one is more right or wrong than anyone else. Except, perhaps, when it comes to hard, indisputable facts. 

In philosophy, the first stance would be called “objectivism” and the second would be called “relativism”. 

While the second option might seem humble and inclusive to many, it in reality leads us into a fantasy land where there is no common ground to stand on. It also sort of makes everyone the god of their own world, which does not sound so humble anymore. Furthermore, if there is such a thing as objective truth, we will almost inevitably end up in the wrong place if we discard the idea that there is such a truth. And in my humble opinion, there is absolutely and undeniably such a truth. Even when it comes to moral issues. I have a somewhat simple view when it comes to this. One which cannot be used in an absolute sense. But what I basically believe, is that the best way of determining moral truth is when a particular moral stance is put into practice. And most ideas have been put into practice, in one way or another.

For example, if our current cultural values create a well functioning society, happy individuals and leaders that lead our countries in a positive direction, then our moral values are true. If not, they are false.

Many of our brightest minds tell us that we are nothing more than intelligent, pleasure seeking animals. If this is true, those that put this philosophy into practice should be the happiest, most well functioning individuals in society. I can of course only speak for myself. But during the time when I put this philosophy into practice in my teens and early twenties, I was poor, lazy, overweight, emotionally numb and I engaged in destructive partying every weekend, which would have led to addiction eventually if I had kept it up. I know that I’m an extreme example. But I met many people like myself in my youth.

Now, let’s get back to the question of “my truth”. We can use the worn out analogy of the map. Let’s say that we are going to walk through a forest. This is not the typical kind of forest. It’s a forest full of traps. Luckily, many people have gone before us through to forest. So there is a map that they all have contributed to. Someone gives us this map. It contains both the right direction and the traps clearly highlighted. But we take one look at the forest and the map, whereupon we decide that we want to find our own way. Following a map is no fun and the forest is much more beautiful in places that deviate from the known route. I think the answer is obvious to the question of whether this is a wise choice.

Is this analogy correct? Or am I simplifying things too much? Well, in my experience we don’t usually really know what we truly want. Our capacity self-deception is almost endless. Many end up destroying themselves. And even among those that don’t, many reach the end of their lives realizing that they have prioritized the wrong things. Which leads to a bitter end to an, on the surface, successful life. And even if we don’t feel this way when we reach the end of our lives, it’s still possible that we have prioritized the wrong things anyway. 

This possibility is what I wish to wrap this up with. I’m not going to pretend that I know exactly what is going to happen after we die. Or if we are in danger of something bad happening to us after death if we make the wrong choices in this life. What I do know, is that life goes on after death in some way. Therefore, if we don’t view our life from the perspective of eternity, we will have the wrong perspective on a very fundamental level. 

I also know for a fact that God exists, has an intelligence, a will and is personal. I know that God cares for each and everyone of us. Therefore, if we don’t view our life from this perspective, we will have the wrong perspective on a very fundamental level. 

These two perspectives, if taken seriously, will have implications for how we view the factual claims about the world, as well as how we view moral truth. They will be the very mold that shapes our lives. They will demand things of us. Require us to change and become different from who we are. If we believe that we are going to live forever, many things that seem important from a finite perspective, such as career, wealth and social status, become unimportant. But I don’t think that the opposite is true. Our friends, family, our character and our moral choices are important both for this life and for the one to come. But some things that from a finite, atheist perspective are not just unimportant, but utterly nonsensical, such as going to church and in other ways spend time with God, become very important.

Therefore, I believe that these two perspectives need to be the foundation of the road that we travel on. They are true and written into everyone’s heart. And we don’t just need to believe that they are true. We also need to live as if they are. If we can’t feel them in our heart, it means that our hearts are numb. And if we don’t like the conclusions that they lead to and therefore decide to take a different route, we will inevitably get lost and fall into traps. This is why I believe that objective truth matters, no matter if that truth is about the physical world, spirituality or morals. In the end, when we start to see things clearly on a fundamental level, all of these areas fit together.

Perception, God and the Bible

We need to take back the control of our minds! In this blog post I will explore the conditions that we live under from my perspective as a Christian and believer in God. But I will try to do so in a manner that will offer some food for thought for anyone, regardless of prior beliefs. And I ask of you that you try and relate what I'm saying here to your own life and experience. Because it's so easy that we turn what we read into just empty word. Especially in these days, when so much is trying to catch our attention.

I believe that the truth is to be found in the Bible. I also believe in progressive revelation. This means that I don’t believe that the whole truth has been revealed to us yet. I believe that the truth of the Bible expands as we learn more about the world and the particular time that we are living in. And I believe that some of our current well-established interpretations need to be discarded, in favor of others that are more plausible.

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.