Perspective. How do we see ______? It almost doesn’t matter what we put in that blank, if our perspective is skewed or obscured, correct conclusions are difficult to make. That has been the case for me in regard to truth.
I have seen truth, and therefore God, from a perspective that used the eyes of my flesh. I am not talking about seeing truth and God as if they stood in front of me, rather I’m talking about seeing them from a fleshly perspective, from a finite, mortal vantage point where the boastful pride of life raises one’s opinion beyond its gainful limits. What I saw when I looked at truth was a duality that caused a crisis in my faith: How can I have faith in something so divided?
Below are my thoughts as I processed through this mess in my mind. I invite you to wander with me. I know I am not the only one who has questioned the validity of faith, wondering if faith rests in something real or is it a creation of my own? How can I rectify what I experience in this life with all its sorrows, disease, and death with a belief that God is good? Is faith just a matter of choosing to see the good and ignoring the bad?
I began my journey in Deuteronomy 8 where God’s children were warned that pride can abscond with faith, that abundance of blessing can replace reliance on God, and I saw myself:
Pride, the great enemy of faith, grows in comfort, ease, and peace. The barrenness of the time spent in the wilderness is forgotten and arrogance commends the actions of my own hands. Though I speak in thankful tones, even in my prayers, I name the shadow that rises in my heart: hubris.
I do not understand faith. I resist the idea of it. It sits in front of me as a choice, when I desire it to be something other than that, something more convincing, something I can’t hold in my hands. I want it to be larger than I am; I want it to overtake me.
“Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God,” these words ring in my mind. The enemy to faith is pride. I know this to be true and can see how the math plays out. Making myself larger than the God I claim to serve elicits conflict.
Though there is recognition of my minuteness in contrast to His immenseness, it feels so extreme that my mind dismisses it. It falls into the unfathomable…so I don’t, which leaves me the god of my own universe. His enormity, His greatness cannot fit in my mind so I am alone in there.
There seems to be a disconnect between my perception and my experience. My experience of God has been deeply sweet, absorbing into my soul like a marinade into tough meat, permeating and infusing. But the perception of my mind is clinical and void of affectual impact; the perception of my mind is a cold calculation of information where beliefs wither in the intensity of the light that burns them turning them into the ash they came from--or so goes the cynic’s song.
Why does the mind seem to be such a harsh enemy of the heart? It’s as if one must die for the other to live, that reason must submit itself to the longings of the soul for joy to find its seat and settle in.
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Our temporal existence carries with it a falseness that does not represent God. By this I mean there is nothing about God in His essence that is not everlasting. Our present circumstances, which are as finite people living finite lives, do not represent the specific aspect of God that is eternal. What we know and experience now is incomplete. Our understanding of God is limited. So to us, from our vantage point, it feels as if there is a duality at work. As if somehow truth is both finite and infinite. That is an illusion.
We think we see an incongruence in truth because of our experience. Death and all its accouterments are this confusing addenda to the eternality and purity of truth.
This idea helps me make sense of it all. The problems I’ve had with faith stemmed from an apparent inconsistency that marred both my picture of God and of truth. When I see that this “inconsistency” is a result of the temporal nature of our experience both of life and of God then the duality disappears, the falseness drops off and disengages from truth and I am able to see more clearly. Or perhaps the reality is that I cannot see more clearly today but that I now have confidence that I will one day be able to see more clearly when I am beyond this temporal life. I believe in the finality, or finiteness, of death and evil, etc., so tearing it away, as it has attached itself to my understanding of what is real (to “reality”), makes the picture of truth clearer.
Faith then becomes something other than a choice with this picture; it becomes a joy. It throws off its need to deny one reality in order to embrace another and instead becomes an invitation to join in and take part in what is eternal. The tone and tenor fully change. The desire to be “overtaken” is nearer to my experience; the persuasion to both my mind and heart is comprehended, known, and felt.
I had forgotten. And I do at times. I forget the unhappy effects of living in our temporal tents. The mask of this finite reality veils the eyes of the mind.
“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known” I Cor. 13:12.
“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” 2 Cor. 4:18.
Hubris elevates one to a position of authority. It declares understanding, knowledge, and wisdom are things to be owned and controlled. Pride of this sort is confident in one’s own grasp of the situation. This is arrogance. “Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God.” Yes. I do not cringe and bristle at these words now.
These are just steps we walk as we work out our salvation, are they not? These are the times we wrestle with God by the river and walk away with a limp. The limp I feel is a welcome reminder of my finiteness, my blindness, and the veil that covers my view. The problem is not with truth and not with God, it is with my present reality and vantage point.
I rest here, and resist it not: “Now faith is the assurance of thingshoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” Heb. 11:1.
Well said author... Amen!
Posted by: JD_Wininger | May 20, 2019 at 05:26 PM