Posted on by Abe Austin

Is it Weak to be Meek?

“Blessed are the meek,” Jesus taught, “for they shall inherit the earth.” I have heard several Christians discuss this passage, and they often take time to explain that meekness should not be associated with weakness, as the two mean different things.

It is true that the words have different meanings and shouldn’t be used as synonyms, but obviously there is a reason why the two are often associated with one another. Meekness, as well as other submissive qualities like humility and obedience, are indeed traits that are often found among the weak. Young children come to mind in particular. They are small and lacking in power, so they are required to be meek and submissive, because the will of the adults is imposed on them whether they want it or not.

Then, as they grow, children gain their own power. Resisting the will of others, and even of imposing their own, become viable options. Having gained this power, most people never want to go back to that state of being beholden to others.

However, just because we have enough power to make our own rules for ourselves, doesn’t mean that we should. Jesus called on us “to become as little children,” and showed an example of giving up his will for that of the Father. Jesus wasn’t calling on us to become weak again, though. It was a call to become submissive even though we have our own strength. Unlike a child, meekness, humility, obedience, and submission become a choice for us now, rather than the default way of being. We are not weak, but we place our strength upon the altar and become as though we were weak, complying with the Lord’s will even when it differs from our own.

Now I have been saying that when we become adults, we finally possess our own power, but that’s only relatively speaking. When we get to the other side, I’m sure we will recognize how truly insignificant and powerless we were even as adults in the broader scheme of things. God gives us the illusion of control now so that the quality of our character can be tested before we would be conferred with any real power in the hereafter. Meekness, even in strength, is essential to using our strength correctly.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Tempted by Glory, Frightened by Pain

After his baptism, Jesus was led into the wilderness, where he fasted for forty days and nights in preparation for his earthly ministry. It was in that vulnerable state that Satan met him and presented to Jesus a series of three temptations. First, Satan suggested that Jesus should turn rocks into bread to satiate his hunger, then to prove his divine sonship by leaping off a building so that angels might catch him, and finally to receive all the kingdoms of the world as a reward if he would worship Satan.

We say that these were the temptations of Jesus, but it isn’t specified whether he was actually tempted by any of them. In the records that we have, Jesus seems to dismiss each offer without any trouble.

At their core, each of these temptations has to do with worldly pleasure and glory. The pleasure of satiating one’s appetites, the glory of receiving the honor of others, the glory of dominating the world. Jesus was given temptations of glory, but these might have had little sway on him.

But temptations of glory are not the only foe that must be overcome. Satan also influences mankind by our fear of pain. Fear of being an outcast, of being punished, of even being killed. Jesus was subjected to these also when he bore the sins and pains of the world, was betrayed by his own people, and condemned to a torturous death. Here, Jesus actually did seem to have been tempted to turn from his calling.

At the point of embarking on that great sacrificial journey he prayed, “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me” (Luke 22:42). Not only this, but near the end of his suffering he exclaimed, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). Jesus had been impervious to glory, but clearly not to despair. This does not surprise me. I believe that fear has more power over all of us than offers of glory.

Of course, it is important to note that feelings of fear and despondency do not, in and of themselves, constitute a sin, though they can ruin us depending on our reaction to them. In both cases, we must note that Jesus prevailed. In the first, he followed his desire for the cup to be removed with, “nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.” In the latter, even though he felt abandoned by his Father, still he showed continuing trust in Him with his final words: “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46). Perhaps Jesus feared, but ultimately, he remained faithful.

Each of us will face both of these challenges in life, and at one point or another succumb to them. We will compromise ourselves for the glory of others, or we will shrink from our responsibility because we are crippled by fear. Knowing that these are the strategies of Satan, we can prepare ourselves to weather them as best we can, and when at times we inevitably fail, we can turn for help to the one that never did.

Posted on by Abe Austin

A Life That I’m Proud Of

There is no specific accolade or achievement in this life that the gospel of Jesus Christ guarantees for me. It does guarantee, however, that my life will be optimal. It will be the most fulfilling of all the possible lives that I might have led. Even if that means it was still fraught with hardship and pain, it will at least be a life that I will be proud to have lived.

That might not seem like much to the naive, but for those that have realized that the default life has no such assurances, that promise is everything.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Condemned Before Redeemed

Before we can be redeemed, we have to be condemned. Before we can be reborn, we have to have perished. Before we can be healed, we have to be broken.

And we have to be condemned, and perished, and broken, because we don’t recognize our natural fallen state until what little good we have is taken away. Though death is our certain end, we don’t feel the reality of it until we sin. Sin reveals to us the fallen nature we were always under and makes death itself more real to us. Sin brings upon us a sense of condemnation both for our guilt and our mortality.

Thus, we start in a state of innocent delusion, and we break that delusion by being awoken to our state of condemned mortality. But then we are reborn from that state of condemned mortality, not back into a state of delusion, but into the genuine article of eternal life. Though first we had to die, we are reborn into the reality of redemption.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Encouraging vs Demoralizing

Part of parenting is inviting our kids to become better, to challenge them beyond their limits so that they grow and know that they can grow. At the same time, we also need to be careful that we don’t put unrealistic or ill-fitting expectations on them that can breed resentment or demoralize them. It’s a fine line to walk, and worth considering how it can be managed. In fact, it is worth considering how God, Himself, manages to walk it with us so that we can learn from His example.

As I’ve pondered these questions, the answer that has come to mind is that it all comes down to how well one knows their child. Not how well they know who they wish their child was, but how well they know who the child actually is. God is so good at getting the best out of us because His knowledge of us runs straight to our core. He even states that, “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee,” (Jeremiah 1:5). He has a perfect understanding of our trajectory and can run through it to a point that lays naturally ahead of us, saying “this is who you were born to become.”

The mistake that too many earthly parents make is that we already have our child’s trajectory determined in our hearts before we even met them. We have chosen an arbitrary point of our own making, and we still require the child to meet it.

Put another way, whereas God holds up a vision of the child as his genuine best self, we too often hold up a vision of a made-up person that the child is not aligned with and will only hurt himself in trying to become. This latter approach sends a message of, “this is who you are not, and that’s a problem.”

Since God already holds the perfect perspective of each child’s natural trajectory and potential, we can never come to better vision for our child than His. Our ability to lead our child correctly will be entirely based on our own alignment with God. It will be by standing in the place where He is that we will have the proper perspective to see how to make our children flourish and not be discouraged.

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Breadth of All Good

God is all good, but does that make Him all-merciful or all-just? He must be both, or else He would only be half-good. It should therefore come as no surprise that we see examples of both forgiveness and retribution in the Bible. Sometimes God shows mercy, perfectly. Sometimes He demands justice, perfectly.

When we stand before God’s throne in the next life, and He assigns us a judgment either to our damnation or exaltation, it will be a judgment that is perfect. In that day we will know that His decision is right, and we will not have any basis to say that He was too lenient or too strict.

There are even cases in the Bible where God showed an openness to both justice and mercy, as they were each apparently an appropriate outcome for the situation. Thus, we have the extending of Hezekiah’s life, the sparing of the Israelites after they made the golden calf, and the redemption of Nineveh. God was apparently inclined to have things go another way, but in His all-goodness could allow for a different path. Probably many of us are in that same middle area, where both God’s mercy and His justice could rightfully claim us. It is to our advantage to use this time to our advantage, to try and secure the side of God’s goodness that we desire.

Posted on by Abe Austin

God’s Body: Worshipping in Spirit

What is God?)

I have spoken of God as a super-entity, one that we are all components of. I have referenced both Paul’s allegory of the Body of Christ and the Hindu notion of universal consciousness.

This sort of aggregate view of God is different from other teachings that I believe, though. I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has one of the most individualized notions of God, about as far away as you can get from viewing the Almighty as an abstract aggregate.

So, is all this talk about God, the super-entity, purely theoretical to me? An interesting thought experiment and nothing more? No. Personally, I don’t have any qualms about believing in both an individual and an abstract God.

Concrete Conceptions)

It is our natural tendency to try and explain something so that it becomes concrete to us. Religions often describes a very specific version of God, because people need a specific, concrete idea of what they are directing their faith towards.

But most religions also teach that God is beyond comprehension. He is not simply a more powerful version of ourselves, but part of an entirely different classification that exceeds the limits of our mortal minds. Thus, the concrete ideas of God may indeed identify true aspects of Him, but there is no way that they can capture the entire thing.

We know that we cannot conceptualize all of God. There are parts of Him that we might know are right, and parts that we think are partly right, and parts that we don’t know one way or the other, but which possibly could be right. And beyond all of those, there are almost certainly other parts that we don’t know anything about at all, but which bind all the other parts together.

In the book Flatland, a square in a two-dimensional world meets a sphere intersecting with the plane of his existence, appearing only as a slice of its original self: a circle. The sphere raises and lowers itself through that two-dimensional slice, becoming a larger and smaller circle. To the square the sphere appears as different, changing beings, but it is all the same sphere in the end.

Could it be that God is the same? As a higher dimensional being, could it be that God is able to be both simultaneously one and many?

Worshipping in Spirit)

Perhaps it was this uncertain and unknowable aspect of God that Jesus alluded to when he said that we “must worship [God] in spirit.” Because God is of a higher order, and is incomprehensible to our minds, at the end of the day we can only direct our fealty in His general direction. We worship the overall spirit of what we perceive Him to be, devoting ourselves to our imperfect conception of Him, waiting for the next life to fully understand Him as a whole.

In either case, I find the questions of what the nature of God is, and what His “body” is, and what it is in relation to us, and what that means for how we ought to view reality to be most intriguing. These questions yield all manner of thoughtful introspection. This will conclude my study in this area for now, though it is an area that is still active in my mind, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I revisit it at some point. Thank you for accompanying me on this journey.

Posted on by Abe Austin

God’s Body: The Beginning and the End

Part of God)

I have spent some time discussing how viewing ourselves as part of God whole allows us to better accept the trials of life that come our way. Yes, those times still hurt, but we understand that since we are a part of God, He isn’t asking us to go through anything that He isn’t willing to face Himself. He is right there experiencing the exact same pain alongside of us, thus able to provide both perfect empathy and healing care.

Of course, exactly what it would mean to be “a part of God” is still open to interpretation. We do know that individual cells are part of the organ, the individual organ is part of the body, the individual body is part of a community, the community is part of a nation, and the nation a part of the human race. Man is both made up of parts and a part of something more. He is in the middle of an order that extends out to places smaller and larger than we know. Could it be that both its root and its end, its smallest origin and its largest aggregate, are one and the same God?

A Divine Struggle)

Considering that such might be the case, that all of us might be from God and for God, then that raises some interesting ideas as to what we are all doing here, and why difficulty and pain are a necessary part of this earthly existence. Consider these verses from Paul in his letter to the Corinthians:

For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
-1 Corinthians 15:25-26

If we are all a part of God, then the greatest thing that this collective body of God could do is learn how to overcome every ill and affliction, including its own death. This gives a fascinating lens with which to view the increase of corruption and chaos around us. Could it be that this mortal trouble is not contrary to the plan, but exactly in accordance with it? Could it be that the plan is to take on all trouble by degrees, so that the body of God may struggle through every trouble and overcome it? And if that is so, then each of our individual struggles is part of the striving and overcoming of the whole!

Posted on by Abe Austin

God’s Body: Missing the Mark

In my last post I discussed how the Western philosophy of individualism can create a moral dilemma about God allowing pain in this world. I explained that an Eastern philosophy of collectivism can dispel that dilemma, because when one views himself as part of God, then God is actually experiencing the pain personally, enduring it for the greater good.

Human Shortcomings)

Does this mean that Eastern philosophy and collectivism is superior to Western individualism? Maybe in some regards, but I don’t believe in all.

Every philosophy we have has passed through human hands and is therefore corrupted. Even if the philosophy originated from a pure source, such as the word of God, it all passes through the prism of flawed mortal understanding. The pure light is bent and diffracted and we end up with philosophies that might be generally good, but which now have flaws. In time, those flaws will compound until we have a serious divergence from the truth. This is true for any Western philosophy, and any Eastern philosophy, and any other philosophy at any time or place.

We all miss the mark and create confusion. When we do so consistently across our entire culture, then the people of our nations will have inherent problems with God, based upon those flaws. And since that philosophy becomes ingrained at an extremely young age, most won’t even question the premises behind their complaints. They won’t consider, “maybe God isn’t wrong, maybe my fundamental framing of life itself is off.”

A Glass Darkly)

Paul acknowledges this inherent shortcoming in humanity with his famous words, “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known” (1 Corinthians 13:12). He admits to murky vision, though he does at least carry the hope of future clarity.

I believe at the root of most, if not all, moral quandaries is a fundamental misunderstanding of God, Himself. Because our conception of His person, His attributes, and His relationship to us is misaligned, we become misaligned to ourselves, our neighbors, and the world at large.

Being able to recognize this predisposition for error is the first step in seeing past our flaws. So humbled, we can grope forward, taking the light where we can find it. We can understand that any person we listen to for long enough will surely tell us something wrong, but also, they might tell us a new truth we never before had seen. And then, one day, as Paul attests, we shall see face to face and know in full.

Posted on by Abe Austin

God’s Body: Who is Ultimate?

In my last post I suggested that the struggle to reconcile a loving God with the existence of suffering might only be an artifact of our Western Individualism, and that the problem appears to be a non-issue to people of other cultures. Today I shall attempt to explain how this might be the case.

The Ultimate Individual)

Individualism creates the sense that the individual is supreme. The greatest ideal is the empowerment and the well-being of the individual, and there is no tolerance for the harm or deprivation of the individual. Society may flourish, but not at the expense of the individual.

Thus, even a God who hurts the individual is considered unacceptable. If God hurts me, my individualism cries out that this is an injustice, because the highest ideal: my individual well-being, has been thwarted. Anything that thwarts the highest ideal must be evil.

Part of Something Greater)

There are passages of scripture that suggest this view might be flawed, though. Paul speaks at length about the “Body of Christ,” suggesting that we are all but parts within an even greater whole. This suggests some sense of collectivism, instead of pure individualism.

Eastern philosophy has a strong sense of collectivism, informed no doubt by its ancient religions, such as Hinduism. In that theology, ultimate reality is a single, universal consciousness, and the end state that we strive for is to surrender our sense of individual self, being subsumed back into the universal consciousness that we always were.

From either of these “part of something greater” perspectives, the suffering of this world, while still tragic, no longer appears as a violation of morality. Since we are all part of the universal consciousness or God, any suffering we experience is just that supreme essence inflicting that pain upon itself, and who could say that it doesn’t have the right to do that?

An Analogy)

Imagine if I were to fall off a ladder, and in order to prevent greater harm to myself, I threw out my hand to break my fall, resulting in all of my fingers being broken, but the rest of me remaining unharmed.

My fingers, if they had too pronounced a sense of individualism, might say to me, “Why did you hurt me?! My life was going along fine and then you thrust me out in harm’s way and let me take a blow. Why?! What right do you have to hurt me arbitrarily like that?”

To which I might remind the hand, “I didn’t do it to you, I did it to me! You are me. I haven’t asked you to go through anything that I’m not also going through right this very minute! And you could not see it from your local perspective, but I did it to save the greater body, which ultimately is better off for everyone, including you! And now that that’s done, let me tend to your healing, because all of us will be better when you are.”