Inner Devotion, Outer Chaos

The most pronounced conflict for Christians starts with inner battles within various portions of someone’s mind (Romans 12:2).

  • God’s work is to transform us from the inside into His image, while the Satan works to undermine Him at every step.
  • The requirements for change make following Jesus inherently uncomfortable, even while there’s joy in that discomfort (James 1:2-4).
  • In practice, it means constantly admitting insufficiency on everything, while accepting the Christ is sufficient.

The New Testament from Acts onward vividly shows the necessary sacrifices the early Church had to make. They were persecuted in every possible sociopolitical direction, but the core believers never strayed from their faith.

One of their most prominent traits was an undying mission to share the Kingdom of heaven with everyone around them, and they met the world’s opposition with bold, peaceful resistance. This was driven by Jesus’ message, which can summarize as “follow me all the way to death itself, and you will find peace”.

This wasn’t a grand movement sweeping hundreds of people, but was a quiet and personal set of convictions for each Christian individually at key times and places. If someone professes the truth of Christ and changes because of it, they’ll adopt more of God’s attributes and grow disinterested in day-to-day contentions.

Enter the Order

Unfortunately, our minds are volatile things that don’t change easily or predictably. We imagine things that don’t exist, don’t see what’s plainly in front of us, obliviously build stories out of what we do know and generate bias from the stories, and overall misjudge reality.

Most Christian thought leaders imply that our understanding distorts only because of our fallen nature, and will propose more order in our day-to-day lives.

And, it’s true that God asks us to self-discipline in light of our shortcomings, all for the purpose of attaining eventual perfection.

However, that’s not the entire story.

Enter the Chaos

One truth of pure chaos, however, is that God still has authority over it (Revelation 4:11). To Him, it’s all under control, even when it’s humanly impossible to conceive how it could be a well-regulated system.

God has made everything beautiful for its time (Ecclesiastes 3:11), and that includes disorder.

Mental strength, like its physical counterpart, can get us into severe trouble if we overuse it, and the trauma of this world can easily provoke us to over-burden ourselves with an obsession about creating spiritually impactful results.

The actual results God creates are nothing short of miraculous: God works individually to allow literally every personality and culture to align with a shared cause, even while any practical agreement on absolutely anything else will devolve into dramatic conflict.

This becomes even more complex in light of people who were raised in Christian culture, took a step away, and came back (my testimony as one of them). They have seen both sides of the situation, vividly.

Enter the Inner Results

By definition, faithfulness in Christ always requires risk.

  • A direct relationship with God without an intermediary (e.g., a priest, Moses) is a blatant risk, where there are no secrets and our complete insufficiency.
  • Even in Christ, a truly compassionate High Priest, is the most change-prone experience we can ever do (Hebrews 5:7-10).
  • Trusting in His will (which is entering a lot of belief in the unknown) and acting in love is against our nature because it’s never fully safe.
  • In this changing, we gain knowledge, assent that leads to an increased capacity for trust, increased capacity for love, and increased risk tolerance.

However, this paradoxical living is the only way for us to reliably get rid of all defective feelings that have turned into beliefs:

The growing Christian will be in a state of perpetual “lucky misfortune”, where the hardships never destroy them (though they’ll happen like anyone else).

  • It won’t be predictable, either, since God is too creative to do the same thing twice.

Ironically, this arrangement will not create a Nietzschean Übermenschen.

  • Living like Christ is taking the role of a servant, meaning we won’t see the faith we are exhibiting as we live it (Philippians 2:5-8).
  • Christians are still fully sinners, but will have the unique and confounding qualities of quickly repenting and quickly forgiving.
  • While the sins will diminish as they continue their journey, believers will battle their own existence to the day their body finally gives up (Romans 7:21-25).

Over time, this will adapt a Christian’s perspective into love, which will spread as a few major themes across the scopes of their life:

  1. On a personal level, they will find themselves possessing increasing compassion for others.
  2. On a group level, they will look to the interests of everyone else.
  3. On a grand political level, they will have a seeming “aloofness” over what happens (often mixed with humor), since they believe God is in complete control and they will reign with Him someday (Colossians 3:4).
  4. When hardship arises, they will draw from Him more deeply, and will become even more righteous as they learn more humility.

Enter the Outward Results

When a believer is exposed to the world after their soul has started shifting, the world doesn’t accept that unpredictable change, and it’s not difficult to understand why.

  • Mature Christians identify part of a spiritual “high society” in a close connection with God.
  • But, they are often the underclass in this world, with no proven reputation to validate that spiritual inheritance.
  • In that sense, it’s easy for the world to see them as entitled.

Given everything under the sun, followers of Christ portray a confusing and seemingly contradictory narrative:

  • On the one hand, sincere Christians are generally more motivated, hopeful, patient, loving, kind, and virtuous.
  • On the other, they’re less motivated to gain things like money, politically difficult to pin down, not hungry for power, and slow to advertise their successes.
  • Many of them, like the mythical Saint Patrick, tend to respond with kindness instead of justifiable anger over the things that happen to them. Others, like Martin Luther, protest and die for causes that don’t appear to be that big a deal.
  • Further, there are plenty of so-called believers who are Christian-in-name-only, often to the benefit of their reputation, and they dilute the public perception of Christianity.

In general, the world doesn’t know how to respond to them because they don’t know how to predict them, both individually and politically:

  • Christian culture frequently encompasses quite a bit of common-sense wisdom (e.g., Proverbs), but it typically won’t come with the cold-hearted shrewdness endemic to most of this world’s wisdom.
  • Many of them will react in anger, which the Christians will meet with grace.
  • When they do provoke a Christian to anger, that’s only for that time, and they may likely be more virtuous the next time around.
  • The presence of false Christians will only magnify legitimate Christians’ lifestyles even further.
  • They will feel, but won’t be able to state, a constant paradox:
    1. What they do is sinful, and not approved by Christians.
    2. They are, however, still loved and accepted by those same Christians.
    3. Upon inquiry, Christians don’t want them to act sinfully because it will harm them.
    4. However, they’re still free to still do what they wish to do.
  • When persecuted, strong believers are more keen to feel pity than anger toward their persecutors, which frequently makes their persecutors more angry, leading to more grace they won’t know what to do with.

This forces a massive decision on the non-believer as they experience this paradox:

  1. The Christians’ motivation fascinates them, so they ask more about it.
  2. They accept their perspective as valid, and convert to Christianity themselves.
  3. The ideas and views they hold to are so taboo and dangerous that the Christians must be silenced, and possibly exterminated.

Broken Power Games

We’re trained from an early age to submit ourselves to more powerful people and organizations out of a general fear of their punishment and a desire to gain at least some of that power for ourselves.

Christians disrupt that natural power dynamic. They’re still submitting, but to God’s authority above those people in power. And, unlike mob rule, they’re more at peace with whatever those leaders do, even if it turns out worse for them.

Thus, leaders are unimportant and respected, two traits that shouldn’t coexist toward the same human at the same time, and it makes the leaders feel both valued and existentially small.

As a result, a Christian is statistically less likely to hold a high-rank position in society as their secular analogue (e.g., the sciences). An equally skilled and intelligent Christian will receive fewer job opportunities, affirmations, awards, commendations, and respect from their culture than a non-believer with approximately the same attitude. They just can’t fit in.

This becomes even more complicated when Christian-in-name-only groups spring up in those communities (e.g., Christian apologetics about science).

For God

This public shame and inner struggle stems from that Christian’s choice. If they denied God and went back to pursuing money, media presence, happiness, human relationships, and anything else this world values so much, that discrepancy would vanish.

Of course, God is a jealous God. He originally designed for all humanity to fixate its purposes on Him, then He’d direct it liberally to the rest of creation as He saw fit. It would have given us plenty of liberty to act out the minutiae according to our natural identity. It was His first plan before we sinned (Genesis 2), and Jesus promises the same thing, but with the added side-journey of transitioning out of our sins.

Big Picture

Christianity has a profoundly simple progression:

  1. Jesus is inwardly transforming people.
  2. These transformations are impossible to accurately or consistently track.
  3. Those people are the start of a New Kingdom without borders or limits.
  4. The old kingdoms of this world naturally oppose the New Kingdom.
  5. There’s no long-term peaceful solution, and this world will try to destroy the New Kingdom.
  6. The New Kingdom will eventually prevail when Jesus comes back, but only after the New Kingdom has been nearly destroyed in any outward political sense.

Therefore, healthy Christians are in a perpetual state of peaceful devotion to God above while suffering a parade of misadventures in the world around them. God designed those hardships to both eradicate their idols and advertise the New Kingdom to the world.

In light of that, we should be more concerned in this world with “right now” than anything else, and living in God’s promises. The rest is the devil’s agenda.

blessed

Definition: a God-given capacity to enjoy the goodness of God

christ and culture (the world-spirit cycle)

reference Richard Niebuhr book

Indicate the necessity and significance of Christ alone
Show the analysis, and how it’s wrong (christ and culture, christ with culture, etc)
Indicate the 3 ways it breaks when we add things
experientialism
Emotionalism
Intellectualism
While it’s arguable that God made all things, the spiritual concerns itself with WHY and not simply WHAT
Therefore, it should be for God’s reputation alone

Every single 2nd book attacks false doctrine
2 Co
2 Pe
2 Th
2 Ti
2 Jo

Christianity Was “Borderline Illegal” in Silicon Valley. Now It’s the New Religion | Vanity Fair

When Did Jordan Peterson Convert to Christianity?

christianization

make things “biblical” instead of “sustainable”

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how to lament

Psa 69

1 acknowledge who God is
2 display what trust looks like
3 call on God to powerfully rescue
4 acknowledge that salvation only comes from God
5 God will answer in His time

man does not live by bread alone

Man doesn’t live to get his needs met
He lives to get his needs met from the correct source

stockholm syndrome

if we see the hardship of Christians without the long-term glory awaiting them, God is basically providing a spiritual Stockholm Syndrome to believers

  • at the same time, if that glory is true, then Christians who suffer much have a tremendous blessing waiting for them
  • in short, a Christian is essentially an utterly cursed indivdual, or an utterly blessed one, but never something halfway in between

the Christian redpill

We must live for eternity
Francis chan rope illustration

Christian culture generally doesn’t concern itself with legitimate spiritual gain
They say ‘lets get real’ and ‘lets devote ourselves more’ and ‘practical steps’, but it’s all useless jargon

Side thought: spiritual abuse can never separate God’s predestined child
Parable of lost sheep and prodigal son together

Why do Christian culture calls to action sound like catchphrases?

Christians must come to understand that there are MANY cultural values, and that each individual Christian will only have some connection with some of them, and WILL find offense with others.

  • it’s awareness of the need for open-mindedness about some things (bible verse about condemning a slave of a different master in Romans 14)
  • it also means we all go back to a higher authority, but they ALL are God.

waiting

3 meanings for “wait”

1 dont do anything
2 expect something
3 serve someone

have no shame

Christians need to be free of guilt or shame

  • they have nothing to hide, nothing is wrong
  • [protectors and reals]

identifying by Christ alone

when a crisis arrives, our inclination to (fix) it marries us to it

we may succeed, and the identity is BUT I AM, an opposition to the original crisis and hardship

we may flounder in trying, and become what the crisis defines us as

we may try and succeed, and then fail elsewhere, which is VERY painful and ravages our soul

in all of this, we instead must define ourselves by something else

only Christ is the defining (identity) that we can lean into and succeed over

  • we become children of God, and that is what builds us into something of more valur than what we overcame

without that alternate state of identity, we are bound into the (results) we create to fix those things that our (ptsd) has flagged as problematic

  • if not fixed, for whatever reason, we will lose our sense of wellness, even if things are simply par for the course

we can prove nothing but today

indicate how utterly NOT prepared for the future we ever are

James passage: “tomorrow we will do such and such”
Gospel passage: “self, eat drink and be merry, for you are prepared with a second barn”

however, that calendar is made of 1 box you can control, and 29 boxes you can only speculate or remember

it doesn’t work well with our highly-ordered society of computers and [bureaucracy]

we mustn’t worry about our body

Cain’s sin:
negotiate to save your flesh

We really shouldn’t be too concerned with our status

  • financial
  • social
  • reputation
  • wealth
  • lifestyle

none of that matters in comparison to the spiritual reality of things

the sin of flesh preservation is God’s ultimate resentment:

  • Cain
  • Esau
  • Saul

There’s a very clear distinction for when you can see it.

A. WHEN A GOD-FEARING PERSON SINS

  1. sinner has sinned
  2. sinner has been outed for their sin
  3. sinner is repentant at this point
  4. the consequences come down for that sin
  5. the sinner feels very sorry for what they have done

B. WHEN A REPROBATE SINS

  1. sinner has sinned
  2. sinner has been outed for their sin
  3. sinner is NOT repentant at this point
  4. the consequences come down for that sin
  5. AFTER the verdict, the sinner feels very sorry for THEMSELVES and not the people they’ve harmed