Thy will be done part 1

Thy will be done or my will be done? This is something that seems to run through everything when it comes to our relationship with God. It is something that can be practiced every day as we go through our lives. And it is something that is talked about in all the major religions, as well as in countless spiritual traditions. In every given moment, we can choose to surrender to the will of God, or we can resist what is. In every given moment, we can choose to follow our little ego as it struggles to have its way, no matter what reality is. Or we can surrender to God. 

But there is something more to this. This insight was sort of an aha-moment yesterday, when I listened to John Ortberg. But now that I’m writing it down, it seems like nothing new. I’ll have to think some more about this and make a part 2. I’m sure God will let it come back to me, because I know that it was something important. 

On "food for thought"

Something that I’ve noticed, is that the most valuable insights don’t always come from teachers. They often come from fellow students. And often they come from something that someone says to me, that brings me to have an insight of my own. Maybe someone shares something from their life that I can relate to, which sets my thoughts in motion in a certain direction, till I reach some kind of breakthrough. 

That is what I want to do with this blog. Not teach stuff, but share what I’ve learned through observing my life, using the knowledge that I’ve gathered so far, as the lens through which I’m observing myself. I want my self-observation to function as food for thoughts for others as they observe themselves.

Freedom in God or slavery to the ego

It took a long time for me to see this. Just with so many things in life, I was blind to what was in front of me. But from what I can tell, there are really just these two options.

What I’ve come to realise is that as far as I’m concerned, I live in a very confused state. And I bet it’s the same for other people as well. My blog is probably a good place to start if you want to understand this confusion better, as it is basically what I’m analysing in my blog posts.

I have several wills inside of me compete with each other. Sometimes I decide on one thing. But then I talk myself into justifying the opposite. Not because of some new information. But because I argue myself into believing something else. Most of the time something that is in line with my lower nature and more instant gratification. And then I realise that I suffer because of it - or make other people suffer sometimes - and so I’m back to my original intent.

And even though I know this, I keep falling into the same trap over and over again.

I think that I’ve unpacked something of what is going on here. I’m not a psychologist, so I don’t know all the technical details when it comes to this. And what I’ve understood so far, can be summed up in a couple of sentences. We have our unconscious, that many psychologists, mainly psycho-analytics and the likes, governs most of our behaviour. In it, There we have a mess, consisting of our neurosises, our unconscious, repressed urges, wants, wishes, needs and desires. Then we have a neurological cocktail of neurological-transmitters in our heads and bodies, that call us to do certain actions. 

Then we have the details of the situation itself. Did you know that whether a criminal gets pardoned or not, is heavily influenced by what time and day of the week it is? Or that our answers to questions concerning well-being or the belief about someone’s character, is heavily influenced by the words and the order of the words in the questionnaire? What other unknown factors influence us in our lives? Could, for example, a background noise, that we have shut out from our consciousness, cause us to make a decision that we otherwise would not have made?

Furthermore, we have our habits. These habits are, on a neurological level, connections between different neurons, whose strength depends on several factors, mainly how long we have engaged in the habit, what emotions and memories that are connected to it, how much we focus on the habit mentally and how much importance we attach to it. 

I might have missed some important factor, but you get the idea. If we have formed the habit of reacting a certain way in a certain situation, you are will likely react in that way, unless some other factor compels you to do otherwise. One such factor, the most important one I would say, is becoming conscious that we are reacting in a habitual way. 

But even if we do realise that we are acting in a habitual way, we still have all of the other factors to consider. To try to be aware of even a fraction of all of these factors, is enough to go insane. Let alone to try and actually figure out what we are supposed to do with them. 

This could lead to the, in my view, pessimistic idea of determinism, which basically denies free will, even if there are many different philosophies about it, that view the free will, the lack and degree of lack thereof, in different ways. I will discuss the philosophy a bit more in future posts, but I will not talk that much about the specific kinds of determinisms that exist. What I find important, is what can actually be said of free will contra determinism and how this can be related to our spiritual lives.

Knowing that there is a God, that this God is personal, and that some sort of spiritual reality and at least strongly believing that there is a divine order to things, ordained by God, I can basically find only two appropriate responses to this. The first is to try to get a closer relationship with this God. And the other is to find out what this divine order is and try to live by it. These two choices can be made freely. If we trust that God is Almighty, and that he wants what’s best for us, we should also be able to make these choices knowing that they well produce the best results both for ourselves and others. 

In return, we will receive a compass. Not one that we will be able to always follow, or even read correctly. But it is something tangible. And if we have faith in God and his will, we can trust that it does its best to guide us right, while at the same time respecting our free will. And with time, we might get better at following it. 

Financial advice from a man with financial problems

Why should you take financial advice from someone with financial problems? The answer to that question is most of the time that you shouldn’t. But if you also have problems with money, and you are still lying to yourself and others about money, I’m at least one step ahead of you. 

I admit that money matter to me. I do my best to accept where I currently am. I try my best to be happy and grateful for what I’ve got and to see that all that ultimately matters, is my relationship with God. But I admit that financial problems is a huge stress factor in my life. 

So, this is what I've realised:

I want to have resources to really help other people. Not just help others in similar financial situations as my own to put some band-aid on huge wounds. Band-aid that burns huge holes in my own pocket. 

I want to go abroad on vacation every year. I want to travel abroad to meet interesting people and get mesmerised by all the beautiful places in God's creation. Today I can’t. And when I finally can afford going on vacation, I constantly think about what everything costs and feel bad when I spend more money than I’ve planned. Which has happened on exactly every vacation I’ve ever been on throughout my adult life. Simply put, I want to be able to go on vacation without having financial stress constantly in the back of my mind.

I want to go to the store and just buy the things that I want, without looking at the price of the items. 

I want to never have to worry about bills ever again. 

I don’t want to have to check my bank-account several times every month, to make sure that there is enough money there.

I want to be able to save money every month.

I want to have a buffer.

I don’t want to have to worry about unforeseen expenses. 

I don’t want to argue with my wife and other people about money.

I recognise that all of these things cause stress in my life in a way that significantly lowers my happiness. This does not mean that I shouldn’t try to meet my situation with as much acceptance that I can muster up. It’s a good thing to learn to bear our circumstances and to do our best to focus on the positives instead of the negatives. 

But what it does mean, at least for me, is that I need to face reality as clearly as I can and, to the best of my ability, try to find out what it takes to create a financial situation that I’m truly content with and the do it to the best of my ability. 

This, I believe, is true for most people that don’t live in an ideal financial situation. To admit and accept these things, I believe is sound financial advice, even if it doesn’t come from someone who has “made it”.

Punished by God? Part 1

What if God isn't angry at you? Just try the thought on. What if God never is out to get you? What if God just loves you unconditionally, no matter what you do, because he knows that everything “bad” that you do, you do out of ignorance? Just try these thoughts and see how they feel.

I don't know if I myself can fully believe this. But the more I think about it, the more right it feels. It doesn't have to mean that we're free to do anything. There are still consequences in this life, and this perspective does not exclude the possibility of some hard lessons in the next life, if we fail to learn what we came here to learn in this one. 

But why would our loving, heavenly father punish us for making mistakes, for all eternity? We would never call a human father loving, if he hurt his child when the child made mistakes.

Those things that don't matter

We care about a lot of things that don’t matter. And we don’t give enough care to the things that do. This is at least true for me. 

Among these things that don’t matter, other people’s opinions stand out. If I understand it correctly, the most prevalent theory as to why we care so much what others think, is that in the distant past, when we were living in tribes, being disliked could very well mean death. 

But today, what other people think of us doesn’t matter. As a matter of fact, the world is full of countless examples, of when other people’s opinions prevent people from living the lives that they truly want.

Only who we actually are matters. Yet, we (at least I do) spend a lot of time and energy worrying about other people’s perceptions of us. Even total strangers’ perceptions of us. 

But we would be better off if we could free ourselves even from the opinions of those closest to us. Because if we, instead of worrying about other people’s opinions, focus on being good people, finding out what truly makes us happy and creating the lives that we want, we will in all likelihood be people that other people like. And if someone doesn’t like us even when we are being authentic, there are seven billion other people on the planet that we can hang out with.

Called to Christ? Part 1

I’m a confused person. But I embrace my confusion. I think more people should embrace their confusion. Because there are loads of things to be confused about. 

On the one hand, I feel called to follow Christ. On the other, there are so many weird things with a spiritual nature happening in my life, that don’t fall in line with a normal Christian life. Some fall in line more with what, for the lack of a better word, might be categorised as New Age.

At the same time, I do not believe in Liberal Theology. I don’t think that we basically just have to be nice to each other and everything will be okay. This partially has to do with me recognising that in order for us to be truly nice, we need to have character. And character is not built simply by being nice.

I've knocked on the door

I’ve knocked on the door and it has opened. But now I’m hesitating on the threshold. My baggage keeps me from entering and I’m unwilling to let it go. I’ve been carrying it for so long. I’ve gotten comfortable with it. It has become like a friend to me. Sometimes, I feel like it is carrying me, even if I know that it is not true. Some of it is tied around my neck with a hard knot. But I know the knot will loosen, if I choose to let go of the which will come off more easily. Yet, I’m hesitant to even do that. 

Undeserved grace

What did I do to deserve the grace that I’ve received? Of course it’s not about actions. But all is not well on the inside either. My character isn’t what it ought to be. I can often be unloving and judgmental. I try not to be. But I am. I’m selfish and greedy. Not all of the time. I don’t consider myself a particularly good person. And yet, I catch myself bragging about virtues and accomplishments, even though they in truth are pretty meagre. 

The only things that I’ve really got going for me, is an honest willingness to change into the person God intended me to be. That, and a longing for being with God, that sometimes can move me to tears, but that often is drowned out by my ingratitude for what I have and resentment stemming from all the things that I perceive as being things that I lack, or from the things in my life that I don’t want. 

And yet, God has chosen to step into my life and make his presence known. Perhaps this is so not is spite of all my shortcomings, but because of them. Because, even though I’m still pretending to others that I’m someone that I’m not, I’ve stopped pretending to myself. I’m weak and sinful. I don’t want to be. But I am. And I can only keep striving for a perfection that I know that I will never reach. At least not in this life. 

The strange paradox in all of this, is that I'm okay just the way I am. And at the same time, I'm all but okay.

What the bible does say

In my post a week ago, I talked about things that The Bible doesn’t say, but where many people have absolute beliefs about the Christian stance anyway. Today I want to talk about what The Bible clearly says, but that we tend to overlook. 

What the Bible does say quite clearly, is that we need to be humble before God. Not only that, but humility seems to occupy a special place among the virtues, within Christianity. It seem to be tied into many of the other prime virtues. Thomas à Kempis, the writer of the classic: The Imitation of Christ, gave it the utmost importance.

The Bible does most certainly call us to follow Jesus’ example, to forgive others and look at our own shortcomings, instead of finding faults in others. It tells us to love God, each other and ourselves. All of this is pretty clear. It is written in very plain language and illustrated in numerous examples. Yet, how many of us really contemplate these, obviously very central aspects of Christian faith, and think deeply about what they mean in our everyday lives? If you are like me, you probably easily get lost in speculations about matters of which you cannot possibly have any absolute knowledge, rather than actually use the same mental effort to reflect upon how to apply these very clear and central aspects of Christian fait to your life. To tell you the truth, even though I know that I would benefit from it, I’m scared of taking the question of truly following Christ in all aspects of my life seriously. What consequences it would have, which things I would need to change or prioritise differently, if I truly made the question of following Jesus central to my life. 

The idea that we should give primacy to the clearer and seemingly more important parts of The Bible, does of course not mean that claims about unprovable facts are unimportant. But arguing about factual claims, whether they are historical, contemporary, spiritual or worldly, that cannot be proven or disproven in any absolute sense, might be counterproductive. Especially if it takes focus from the central message of unconditional love, non-judgment and forgiveness. This arguing often even seem to downright contradict this message, when it turns us against one another. As with many other things, this does not just apply to The Bible. It applies to any situation, where we come to judge and resent one another because of differences of opinion or worldview. 

The Bible seems, at its core, to call for us to express love in all that we are and do. This, I think, seems to be the primary command of The Bible, personified in the figure of Jesus Christ. How could it be otherwise? 

What I’ve found helpful, when it comes to expressing love, is to examine the motifs behind my actions and words. If I’m being honest with myself, I find that my motifs, most of the time, are more or less different from those that I consciously presented to myself before examination. Unconscious motifs can often be such ones that do not express love. I believe that this is true for other people as well. If so, at least to me, this leads to the conclusion that, if we wish to be better att expressing love, we need to make self-examination a priority. As the Bible quote in the post-image says.

Here’s what I think. If we choose to live from this radical place of love, where we in all our brokenness do our best to imitate Christ, to make it our life-mission to do so, we have something to measure what we find during our self-examination against. No one expects us to be perfect at it. If you are like me, which I think most people are in this area, you are spiritually lazy. Even if it ultimately leads to nothing good, it’s convenient to deceive ourselves. And this self-deception of course entails finding excuses for not doing what we know we should, or do what we know we shouldn’t, even though we know that it is within our power to do otherwise.