Faith into Focus – Perspective over Possession
I’ve been toying around with a phrase in my mind lately as I’ve gone about my study time and perhaps it’s only a play on words: Actualized Reality. Actualized means something that becomes an active part of a person’s life or experience. Reality is a summation of things that are in existence within our scope of sight, perception and/or understanding. This bit of wordsmithing has come to define a moment where objective (factual, obtrusive) reality synchronizes with our personal lens.
Why is such a odd phrase relevant? How you see your life – the lens through which you choose to see your blessing, your challenge, your pain, your problem…is the problem. Perspective, whether healthy or otherwise, is determined and built as we grow both in age and experience. Due to the brokenness of the world we live in, injury and mistakes are a given and even the most diligent person will have challenges and healing to undergo. It’s high time to get some new glasses, better vision for our lives.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve heard this phrase: Possession is 9/10ths of the law.
In short, even if the thing I hold in my hand isn’t mine, it’s still overwhelmingly mine until I let it go or it’s taken from me by force. But…what if I don’t want you to release it? In fact, keep it away from me! What if I don’t want to take it from you? Can I still get you to release it? I submit that I could by means of perspective.
Let’s say you have a 1oz gold coin in your hand. As of this writing, such a coin would be with upwards of $1,600 USD. That’s a good chuck of money and gold has always been a commodity with intrinsic value dating back several millennia. No one willingly gives up gold, but how might I convince you? Here are some things I came up with:
- I suggest that it is indeed valuable, but actualizing that value is complex, time consuming, laborious and may have other fees associated with it.
- I might suggest that owning it, even showing it to me is illegal and that most all gold coins like that were past due to be turned in for cash. As a result of you still having it, there will likely be severe penalties and legal issues could now result.
- I might also suggest that coins minted in that timeframe contained meaningful amounts of lead and they aren’t actually pure. Apart from purity issues, the lead in the coins makes them somewhat dangerous to handle and complex to store.
- I might conclude that despite all of these issues, of which very few people are actually aware, gold coins still have this pseudo-value in the market and thieves will gladly violate the security of your home to obtain it. You might consider getting rid of it, but don’t give it to me. Perhaps you should just bury it (Matthew 25:24-27).
What do all of these suggestions have in common?
- Emotional Manipulation by means of making the coin turn from a blessing and into a threat or liability to not only you, but also to those around you.
- Fear by means of suggesting there is a punishment for possessing it thus rendering it far less than worthless.
- Degradation by means of suggesting it isn’t pure and that while it has actual value, it’s not useful and therefore less valuable in meaningful ways.
- Lies laced with objective truths by means of gold bullion confiscation enacted by President Franklin Roosevelt during WW2 which was later altered. This is also accomplished by means of offering a false release/escape from the obligation of possessing the coin as if ones perspective was conveyed and accepted as an objective rather than subjective truth and thus making you free of consequences.
- Anxiety by means of suggesting that merely handling it could have health repercussions for the owner and those who have access. Despite the would-be health concerns, due to the obviously fake-news about its supposed value, the coin is something to worry about and thus compounding its already deemed worthless nature.
Does this remind you of another story?
Genesis 3:1b
“Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?”
Like man and woman in the Garden of Eden, our perspectives, our beliefs and the practicality of both are often challenged throughout our lives as we walk through various circumstances. Both in the gold coin example as well as the chat woman had with a Dragon (not a snake), it wasn’t possession that had the final say, it was perspective. Man and woman both allowed their lens, their perspective to be altered or skewed into an alternate reality and we are still paying the price today. Unfortunately, we today are still making similar choices despite their mistake so long ago.
Matthew 6:22-23
“The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. 23 But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
How we perceive our world – our social, emotional, spiritual worldview is perhaps the most central guide to how far we will go and how rich (not just materially) our lives will be.
It doesn’t take much investigation to see how much more emotional flack is bursting around all of us today as compared to years past. I will be among the first to say that our feelings are real, but they only offer a subjective truth. The phrase #MyTruth was largely born as we pushed our opinions, our subjective truth, to be equal to or, in many cases, far outpacing the value of objective facts.
Error occurs when we begin processing the whole of our natural, social, spiritual experiences through pure emotion or virtually any subjective truth without objective context. Pure feelings can never be a lens and produce something healthy on the other end.
Roman 12:1-2
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. 2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may PROVE what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Just as information/revelation needs context (life), our feelings need anchoring (channeling, as a river).
It was explained to me this way a long time ago:
On one hand you have a large slab of very dense rock. On the other hand you have a torch. The rock has positive traits that make it a solid anchor, a defensible fortress and/or a safe place. The rock also has some areas of lack in that it is often cold, overly unyielding, sharp-edged at times and bone-breaking blunt.
The flame also has a lot of positive traits – warmth, purification, illumination, ebbs and flows very dynamically, heat for cooking and pleasant aromas when certain items are added with it. Flame also has some very powerful negative traits. It is also unyielding in its pursuit of its own perception of ultimate freedom. When it is applied over liberally, it can blossom in to a wildfire that consumes all in its path. Even if somewhat confined, it can then choose to focus down and melt through the toughest armor in it’s aggressive pursuits as welding torch.
The situation is such that they both need each other and both hate the needed things their opposite brings. Rock needs to be cut, chiseled, refined to provide guidance and direction to those who interact with it instead of an edge or hammer. Rock also needs the warmth, life, cleansing and the vitality that fire brings. Without the flame, the rock becomes a cold and damp tomb instead of a home with the sounds of life and celebration.
Without the rock, the flame causes much destruction and its only legacy is those who escaped and the smoldering cinders left over. When channeled and directed, the flame can be anchored and made safe without diminishing any of its natural traits.
I’d like to narrow the focus of this writing a little and bring it down to, firstly, the personal relationship G-d offers each of us individually. How do you describe Him, relationally? Really think about the words you choose. Why those words? Why that way? How we perceive Him in our personal lives will have a very meaningful impact on how we live and communicate to others about Him assuming we do at all.
For example, let’s say that G-d has chosen to send a genuine blessing to you in one form or another where there is no way it could be boring coincidence. We can talk about testimonies later. If you perceive Him though a lens that suggests that G-d is largely or even partially indifferent towards you, that blessing then turns into what? A payoff for pain from His supposed negligence in my life? A degrading handout because I can’t make it on my own? Perhaps even a point of anger because of a perceived abandonment in the past that has very little to do with Him at all. Just in that brief example, look how quickly a genuine blessing can be twisted into something very different and objectively illegitimate.
On the other hand, if we are anchored to the Word in faith, our perspective can be healthier and, dare I say, more accurate. I want to be clear here…even with proper anchoring to the Truth, we are still human. We aren’t robots who only think what we are allowed to think by only one channel. He celebrates that diversity in each of us since He kinda designed us that way. We are still going to struggle as the objective truth of the scriptures sojourn from place of being a rock/revelation/information/flame/emotion into our reconciled core where He can dwell if we allow Him to. That sample miraculous blessing, when viewed from a healthy anchor point, becomes very relational, celebratory, encouraging, faith-building, etc. One blessing. Two perspectives.
I was speaking with a small group recently about this topic and it occurred to me that our culture is presently trying to celebrate many synthetic differences largely for the sake of pursuing equality of outcome. Equality of outcome is one of many lies we tell ourselves today. How about we instead celebrate genuine differences and begin to rollback some of the labels we’ve applied to make people feel genuinely less than (<) and/or in need to substantiate themselves in destructive ways?
ADD and ADHD are two diagnoses that are very often applied to people today. Some people have a genuine biochem issue while others have minds that are running at 5,000+ RPMs no matter what. Neither aren’t broken. You’re different. G-d loves variety as well a heart that is both reconciled with Him and those around you. I know many people who have or could probably be diagnosed with either condition. There are certain things they are amazing at doing and there are other areas where they struggle.
The rock needs the flame and the flame, like it or not, needs the rock. Neither are wrong, both need to grow because both are needed. While knowing full well that broad brushing too much can lead to a ton of incorrect assumption trees, this idea can also extend to heavier conditions like cerebral palsy or autism. How quickly do we see the health of a person, a circle, a society when it comes to those who are innocent or even partially helpless? It’s virtually instant. We need each other and we need, first and foremost, a solid anchor that is the Scriptures.
2 Timothy 3:16-17
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
I like how that verse ends with words like complete and every good work. Though substantiated elsewhere in Scripture, the phrase, lacking nothing, could also be applied to us that are willing to adjust our perspective, see ourselves and even each other from His point of view. His is the best perspective any could ever possibly ask for and it’s possible because He said it…Not me.
Matthew 19:26
But Jesus looked at them and said to them, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
Deuteronomy 30:19
I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live;
It’s very much one thing to have someone, like me, to tell you that you’re not an accident and are wonderfully made for a unique purpose. It’s another for you to tell me something similar back, but it’s truly a horse of a different color to tell it to yourself…in the mirror…
Entertaining THAT reality as merely possible might just be the next big an adventure for each of us because it also draws out the question…Do I actually believe my reflection? Can I convince myself? Go see!