It’s a Continuum. Leo Emmanuel Lochard
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our lives from birth to old age, from the diaper to the coffin!
There are many ways in which to approach “resolving” this perplexing, vexatious, paradoxical confounding “Reality” in a comprehensively, holistically, healthy manner! But God has “made a way” not only for us to “negotiate,” or “navigate” through all the travails and tribulations we might encounter during our temporal earthly existence, but to also overcome all obstacles that we share with each other and our natural environment, such as our sinfulness and mortality. (John 16:32–33).
Jesus is “the way, the truth and the life.” And no one comes to God but through Him! (John 14:6–7).
Every person who tries to accommodate his or her rationalizations as to “why do something” or “why to not do something,” must eventually reckon with their conscience, an innate capacity for “cognitive dissonance” that might result in our choosing to do what is right in the sight of God and beneficent to one another!
But, however “situational” they might be, rationalizations only circumvent God’s commandments of righteous living, so that we can “feel comfortable” in “staying where we are.” Otherwise called “situational ethics,” this approach to problem-solving relies on the illogical fallacy that “there are no absolutes” or that “everything is relative.” “Moral relativism” or “value neutrality” is an indefensible self-delusion that has cost us, and is still costing us a lot of grief, pain, trouble, tribulation, injury, and many times, even death! But we breathe Oxygen to stay alive, not Carbon Monoxide! We quench our thirst naturally with sweet Water, and not Sulfuric Acid!
The flesh can resist spiritual transformation, a change of heart, or a change in worldview. But, given that our biology requires fulfillment of not only physiological needs but also emotional and social needs having connectedness with the ways in which we “associate” with “the world in which we live:” “Stasis,” or “unchanging,” “static processing,” or “staying put,” can churn for years on end, as people repeat the same patterns of thinking and the same patterns of behavior, yielding, for example, fatal drug addictions, or other forms of deadly behavioral choices.
The lure of pursuing material wealth due to pride, arrogance, fame, power, or vanity, is attached to the “patterns of thinking” and “modes of conduct” that sustain and feed those world-affirming cravings: “the lust the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life.” (1 John 2:15–17).
“This soul-condition” or “inner-spiritual dynamic” might engender a desire for satisfaction of wants rather than fulfillment of real needs, of wishes rather than actual hopes, and of inaccurate projections into the future rather than reliance upon God’s will for our lives. (Proverbs 11:28; 12:17; 14:12; 29–30; 15:8–10; 19:21; Romans 8:1–11; 12:1–2).
The constellation of conditions, situations, circumstances, parameters, variables, processes, or events that we encounter during our temporary lives on the Planet, appears to be so incomprehensible and inexplicable only due to our sinful Human Nature, the depths of complexity embedded within our “socio-spiritual environment,” which we call “society;” and the unfolding of “Entropy” within our biology and physical earthly environment. From either side, Human Nature and Ecological Nature, we are assailed by uncertainties that might generate anxieties and stress in our hearts and minds. But the peace of God ruling in our hearts through Christ Jesus restores certainty and security to our thought processes, situational responses, and emotions. (Colossians 3:12–17).
“Cognitive dissonance” or incompatibility between “”what is” and “what ought to be,” may contrive “a sense of dislocation” or “of dissociation,” between our inner-selves and the repertoire of behaviors, or the tapestry of events, unfolding before our eyes and unraveling in our lives to which we refer as “the external world.”
As “spirit-beings,” we’re “only passing through” mortal existence in the material-physical Universe, during which, we have to face, to reckon with, to transact or to “deal with:” “Self, Others, and material-physical Nature!”
Each approach, perspective, worldview, or paradigm, that we attempt to “forge” to help us, guide us, direct us, or instruct us, as we endeavor to “configure” this grave sobering “Reality” apart from God’s divinely ordained prescriptions for living, will eventually fail!
Human Beings contrive many “philosophical schemes” in attempts to resolve these perennial contradictions in our lives. All such “philosophical cages” end-up as “mental prisons” for their purveyors and followers whereby doctrines “revolve in a circle” without ever arriving at irrefutable or “definitive conclusions,” or “box people” into stereotypes that foster prejudice, mistreatment, injustice, and cruelty.
How do we “reckon with” or “relate to” these “domains of uncertainty:” One another’s Sinfulness; biological mortality; and environmental Entropy?
Resolving this conundrum, this vexing paradox, is difficult, in the short run, and persistently perplexing in the long run, because of their “intermingling alliances,” or “entangling combinations.” These “disheartening domains” may engender mental responses and emotional adaptations that are deleterious to peace of mind and a restful spirit.
Life and Liberty are gifts, blessings, or endowments from our Creator! Many are the choices we must make. Even more numerous are all the attempts of Human Beings at answering the greater questions that often plague our very “state of being,” or “just plainly being Human!”
Where did life come from? Why is there evil in this world? Is there “an after-life” following biological death? Is there a connection between our lives on Earth and our eternal destiny in the Universe? How can we have certainty in our quest to understand these perennial paradoxes?
We are; we exist; we are real! Yet, those ultimate answers that are not yet made manifest, appear to remain beyond our capacities to grasp or acquire with complete understanding, or fulfilling comprehension! We are “in-the-know,” and yet, uncertainties might cause us to have anxieties leading to stress. The only answer is: Jesus!
“In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” (John 1:4–5)
God had created the bright shining light of the Stars as revealed in the Book of Genesis. What is physical is physical. What is spiritual is spiritual.
As the Apostle John teaches us through God’s Holy Spirit in Christ Jesus, there is another “form of light” that is as real and true as “natural star-light.”
To be “in darkness” is to be “living in sin” for which no repentance is forthcoming in the pursuit of forgiveness for newness of life. Our sinfulness contributes to the limited capacities or characteristic-capabilities of our discerning faculties.
Darkness, spiritually speaking, not only “symbolizes” the reality or presence of sinfulness and evil, amongst us and within us; but, materially darkness also “signifies” night-time darkness, or “the absence of star-light.”
Cain, who murdered his brother Abel, was “in darkness;” not only had he “a sinful nature,” but he succumbed to temptation; he “externalized” its imperturbable and impenetrable intrinsic dysfunctions when he killed his own brother “in cold blood.” Before the coming of Christ, Humanity was permanently chained to the bondage of un-forgiven sins. Thus, Cain gave birth to “forms of behavior” that confirmed and affirmed his “need for salvation.” Cain’s murder of his brother also occurred before the Law, or preceding the times when God had given the Ten Commandments to Humankind through Moses.
Thus, in biblical history, from Cain to Malachi, the last Prophet under the Old Covenant preceding the birth of Christ, that is, until John the Baptist “entered the scene” by the will of God: Such was the “state of Humankind” before the coming of Christ.
Sin, inherited, not only biologically but also spiritually from Adam and Eve, was passed onto their children; which was, “the seed