7. Lost inside of Salvation

My whole conception of everything continues to change, although “change” is not the right word, but rather, to enlarge, to become clearer. I must know four things. I must know God; I must know me; I must know the connection between God and me; and I must know the expression of God through me. In other words, I must KNOW God, man, Christ, and salvation.

And when I say, “must know,” I mean as a matter of life or death. Life is knowing God.
Yet I agree fully with the poet, Alexander Pope. “Presume not God to scan, the proper study of mankind is man.” I am convinced that Pope wrote those words as a rebuke of the Calvinist, John Milton, who was so busy “scanning God” that all he was able to produce was a vast fantasy exaltation of the devil called Paradise Lost.

My “must know” then, cannot contain any presumption to “comprehend,” or, “to figure out” God. To know is intimate intercourse; to know God is to receive God as Word into myself, to believe that word in my heart and to speak that word as Christ personal as me and made visible through me.

Yet here is God’s circular definition. The very moment I attempt to comprehend “me,” I must reference God, for I cannot exist apart from Him. Nonetheless, what, in essence, am I?

I am a bubble; that is, think of a one-celled amoeba with everything that is the amoeba existing inside of the cell wall. I am a bubble of spirit self-awareness and inside that bubble of spirit self-awareness, I tell a story of myself continuously, words as innumerable thoughts rolling around inside of me, first, as my definition of “myself,” and second, as my “knowledge” of everything I imagine to be “outside” my bubble.

Now, my emotions play around with the words of my story, my mind tries to “figure it out,” and my will imagines itself to be in control of all the swirl of ideas that are me inside my bubble. None of those three governs my story, however, but rather my heart. And my heart is defined, in its essence, by one question only. What do I want?

Everyone FINDS exactly and only what they are actually seeking.

To understand “me,” I must then place myself inside my bubble into space and time. First, the bubble that I perceive to be “me,” begins just above my head and goes down just below the top of my belly. Inside my bubble are two central points, two emanations, one might say, that are the essence of “me.” The one that seems to be “on top,” is a center that includes my eyeballs and goes up to the top of the frontal lobe of my brain. This is my mental perception.

The other “center” inside my bubble is most definitely an emanation surrounding my heart.

This is interesting to think about. My hands and my feet are outside of the bubble that is me, they are how I negotiate the world. My shoulders are inside of my bubble, but my lower intestines and sex drive are not. My arms and legs are just connections to my hands and feet.

And even more interesting, my lower jaw with the tongue is also not inside my bubble of self-perception. My perception tells me that the connection between heart and mental perception runs through my lower brain and spinal column, that is, through my emotions and “gut” instincts. This is not true, however. In actuality, something we learn only over time and only by the grace of God, the actual connection between my heart and my mental perception is, in fact, that very tongue.

Now, that is all the “space” of my spirit self-awareness. My story is a vast intermingling of innumerable thoughts, all confused, all self-assured, all under my control, all out of control.

Let me include the larger piece from Pope’s work.

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of Mankind is Man.
Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest,
In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast;
In doubt his Mind or Body to prefer,
Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much:
Chaos of Thought and Passion, all confus'd;
Still by himself abus'd, or disabus'd;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of Truth, in endless Error hurl'd:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

Yeah, that pretty much sums up the story rolling around inside of my bubble.

Yet the story I tell myself about myself, here inside my little bubble of confused self-awareness, is ordered by two things. On the one hand are my deepest underlying definitions buried all through the cells of my body, my hidden memories, and my traumatic experiences in life. And on the other hand, is the continuous flow of time, of an unending change of circumstance passing over me.

In other words, my present story is a continuous reaction to all the differing circumstances I perceive happening outside of my bubble, especially what other people say and do, coming through my senses but ruled by my deepest responses.

Now this is also interesting. I, myself, do not change. I perceive myself, in fact, to be fixed and unmoving, with all interaction with people and circumstances as something passing over me. That perception of being “fixed” in the now is, in fact, inside the perimeters of the definition of “eternal.”

Yet, the thoughts of my self-story, as they are provoked by the flow of people and circumstances, are anything but fixed. They are constantly swirling around, yet on endlessly repetitive themes. There are favorite arguments and dreams that I’m sure I have argued and dreamed in my mind, using the same endlessly repetitive ideas, thousands of times for each one over the years. I’m sure my arguments and dreams have long since become tediously boring to all who know me, but they maintain an undiminished fascination or compulsion to me.

I am never bored with my own story. For in the end, the words of my story are all that I am, here, inside my tiny and very limited bubble. Everything I know, I know only here. In fact, all the universe, including all other people, exists for me only inside my knowledge, inside the endless words of my self-knowing.

I am fully aware, that is, I have discovered over the years, that you also are a little bubble of self-awareness filled with your own story of meaning, just like me. I am aware of that, yes, but even that awareness of you is found only inside my own edifices, arguments, pathways, and perceptions all taking place as words inside my own bubble of self-awareness.

Now, if we could come up with one word that would capture me, here inside my bubble of spirit self-awareness, inside this endless retelling of deeply rooted and familiar thoughts, what word would that be?

I know of only one word,

I am LOST.

I am desperately, desperately lost. EVERYTHING is all WRONG.

And none of my argument, none of my dreams, no part of my story, will ever take me out of this hopeless confusion of an ignorant and disconnected self.

Yet another descriptive word must be added in order to comprehend the full extent of the horror of my lostness, here inside my bubble of endless delusion.

I am utterly VULNERABLE.

That word “vulnerable” means that here, in my psychotic lostness, I can be shattered.

I have certainly been pressed beyond measure in the past, such that I despaired of retaining my sanity. My older brother lost his and died inside the full measure of confusion, darkened by religious accusation, even though he belonged utterly to Jesus. I know my brother, for I am very much like him, and I know how easy it would be for me also to be shattered in a similar way.

I must look next at the wall that surrounds my bubble of self-awareness, the wall inside of which is me and outside of which is everything else. That wall is created by God and given to us for our protection. God Himself will never violate that wall. In complete contrast, satanic mind control requires the shattering of that wall of self-protection. I talked about how this works in Symmorphy II: Essence – “How Was the Cross Perverted?”

In fact, in the darkness of Nicene theology, the cross is turned away from being our doorway into all that is Christ and made to become the very instrument of destruction meant to shatter our wall, and thus to bring us under the power of those who would boast in their victory over our flesh.
My extreme vulnerability, here, inside my desperate lostness, is that my wall can easily be shattered.

~~~

Okay, having established me, here in my bubble telling my endless self-story, let’s bring in, first, the reality of my salvation.

I am NOT lost. Not even a little bit. There is no shadow of lostness anywhere near my existence.

So, if that is true, then what on earth is my problem!!!!??????

You see, my spirit self-awareness IS, in fact, the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of God. And this physical body inside of which my bubble is attached is, in fact, the very flesh of Christ, the Body of God. These facts of my reality are unalterably and irrevocably true.

My problem is my story, the endless and vastly multitudinous array of lines of thought, perceptions, viewpoints, ideas, memories, feelings, all swirling around inside my ongoing life.

We are transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2).

BUT – what is the rudder that steers our ship, the engine that takes the thoughts of our mental perception and the desires of our hearts in this direction or that?

That’s easy – the TONGUE.

Yet our “problem” continues because of the critical reality of our God-like wall of protection, a wall that God will NEVER violate.

Before leaping over to God’s side of things, we must understand that wall more clearly.

My four children are all quite stubborn, and I am so very glad for them. I know that they will never come under the control of religious charlatans. That stubbornness is entirely the gift of God, their protection against manipulation and abuse. At the same time, all four of my children have gentle and generous hearts and will easily take the place of being wrong and will apologize, even at great cost. That also is the gift of God in them.

I received a phone call some years ago from a man whom I had known soon after I returned to the Lord at age nineteen (he was a boy, then). This man, now, had found my phone number and wanted guidance in the Lord from me. He sounded desperate and lost as I have described. Yet he had to tell me that his “spiritual” mentor “in the Lord,” was also on the phone, since this “brother” was responsible to God over his ongoing “discipline.” I did not know then what I know now, but I did know Jesus in grace and in liberty. And I knew that, regardless, I could say nothing that would help him so long as he was under the control of that vulture.

This man’s wall had been shattered by a bully wielding the false cross of Constantine and using “God” through the serpent as his whip of control. Yet that is only one of the many great arenas of darkness that can be found inside “Christian” circles.

And there are various levels and degrees of the shattering and the penetration of the wall of self-protection. Rape and sexual abuse of a child are among the worst, marking a life-long horror inside all the pathways of that person’s self-story. The theft of valued possessions also feels similar, like an inside treasure has been violated, although not nearly to the same degree as rape.

Your wall is of immense importance. And I do think I can say that you have never received from me any violation of your safety. I know that God has never violated your person.

Yet that IS the root of our difficulty.

For how can we know what is real unless we allow another Person to enter into our bubble of self-awareness and to become, Himself, all of our own story?

And so God does enter into us, into our knowledge of ourselves inside our bubble, but ONLY through our express, explicitly stated, that is, spoken, permission, that is, through our faith.

~~~

Now, the reason Alexander Pope was completely correct in criticizing Milton’s “presumed scan of God,” is that humans have created an image of God drawing from the Bible and from the serpent, all mixed together. And so, as they “scan God,” they come up with all sorts of ridiculous conceptions like Paradise Lost.

God can be known only through a Man, the Lord Jesus. Yet Christians have deified even Jesus, turning Him into a similar serpentine image of external exaltation, limited and far away.

Then we read these words of Paul. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received… the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. These things we also speak…  (1 Corinthians 2:11-13 – reduced).

And we are forced to realize that God is just like us (or, rather, we are just like Him.) That is, God also is the Story of thoughts that He tells Himself about Himself inside His own bubble of Spirit Self-awareness.

There are two large differences, however, between God’s Self-Story of Words inside His Bubble of Spirit and ours, one of quantity, and the other of quality. First, God is big, and we are little. That means, basically, that God’s “bubble of self-protection” is not “around” Himself, for He is infinite, but His wall is, in fact, also around each bubble of self-awareness bobbing around inside of God’s own Spirit. And God’s wall protects Him from us.

Gethsemane is God’s express permission to us to enter into His Bubble and to live inside of His Person.

Then, while our false human story is endless self-exaltation merged with endless self-abuse, God’s Story is different. You see, God’s thoughts exist inside a bubble of Spirit Self-awareness that is Love. And thus, all of God’s thoughts are goodness and truth.

That brings us to one of the greatest treasures of the knowledge of God that Jesus has sung inside of me during these years, now, of writing here at my computer desk early in the morning.

And that treasure is knowing the Pro-Knowing of God, something I did not know until I wrote Symmorphy IV: Covenant – “Pro-Knowing.” What I discovered in writing that chapter has continued to grow inside of me, and in my writing since. I must know God.

Yet we can know God’s Pro-Knowing only as I have described our existences and God’s through this letter. That is, the only part of God’s Pro-Knowing that I could actually KNOW, is God’s Pro-Knowing of me, that is, I am able to know God’s thoughts concerning me as they unfold into my life experience.

Look back at Paul’s definition. “The things of God” are His thoughts. And the things of God given freely to me are His thoughts that are, in fact, me.

Now, I will come to know God’s thoughts concerning many other believers in Jesus by coming to know them. But God has, what, a billion saints inside of Jesus? Ain’t no way I will know all of them, not in a million years. And a billion expressions of God’s infinite thoughts are just a drop in the bucket.

But consider a local Community of Christ, around 75 individuals. As I come to know them, so I come to know God’s thoughts taking shape and form all around me. And God shows Himself through the interactions of reciprocal love flowing among us. So, as I am privileged to know God’s knowing of you, I also see your interaction with the 73 other individuals, besides you and me. That is 75x75 interpoints of God-revealed, God showing Himself in Person through our loving one another.

So, here I am, living my life with the flow of people and circumstances washing over me as I sit inside my fixed bubble. And here, inside my own bubble of self-awareness, I am looking out and seeing the unfolding of God made visible in 5,625 different ways. That is, 74 people interacting daily with 73 other people and with me.

And here’s the thing, the human mind is well able to come to know, in wondrous study, the depths of meaning and reality found in 5,625 points of knowing. And 74 of those points of interactions are directly between me and the other precious brethren with whom I walk. In other words, 74 of these studies of God made known are directly connected to my bubble and the remainder I observe with joy and delight.

One of the things I liked while living in a Christian Community of around 150 people for several years was that it took only a very brief glimpse of a brother or sister a quarter mile away for me to know who it was by name. I knew them by their walk, by the movement of their body. And so we know God.

Nonetheless, in spite of all that wondrous study of a teensy-tiny portion of God’s Knowing of Himself, the only portion of God’s Pro-Knowing that I actually and truly know is the unfolding of His knowing of me.

~~~

Okay, all of that is just the backdrop for what I really want to see develop on the page in front of my eyes this morning. Here is what I really want to express.

I must limit myself to that one tiny portion of God that I can know inside of my own bubble and as my own person, and that is, all of God’s thoughts concerning me. Now that is also an infinite number of thoughts, for they will become my life, new every morning, forever and ever.

But let’s not get carried away with infinity or with ALL of God, including all of His infinite number of individual series of infinite thoughts inside of me. I must know me, and thus I must know God’s connection to Me, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the unfolding of my life in the present moment, that is, salvation.

So here I am, inside of my little bubble of self-awareness, that I now KNOW is the Spirit of Christ, attached to this physical frame that I now KNOW is the flesh of Christ. Yet God, in spite of the fact that He fills me full, does not and will never violate ME. Yet I AM nothing other than God’s thoughts inside Himself becoming me. And the One who makes this impossible connection work is the Lord Jesus.

So, let’s put all of God’s thoughts concerning me just outside of my bubble, waiting to enter, each one, with my own express permission. I might exist entirely by those thoughts, but that reality does me no good unless I know them inside my own bubble of story told.

Yet look at God’s great difficulty. I am, that is, all of God’s thoughts concerning me that I am, are already entirely part of God. God’s thoughts concerning me are, in fact, God Himself. And I exist only as each of those thoughts that are God unfolds in my ever-present bubble of now, and thus, become me.

So here is the strange thing to ponder. God’s thoughts concerning me are part of God Himself. Yet God cannot fellowship together with that part of Himself except through me, through my permission, and through fellowshipping with me inside of my bubble of those thoughts that are God becoming my own human person. Now, I say that is a “strange thing to ponder,” but we will not ponder it long. We cannot figure God out; all we can do is receive Him coming into us as Jesus, the Word as it becomes us.

So, God’s thoughts concerning me are just thoughts inside of God. They have not yet become me. God’s thoughts cannot become me until He speaks them. And God speaking His thoughts, that is, the thoughts of God being voiced, is a Person, that is, Jesus.

As I receive Jesus into my bubble, as Word, as my own story of self, not replacing my story with His, nor replacing His story with mine, but rather, Jesus’ own self-story and my own self-story becoming one, fully intermingled and shared, so I become what I am already inside of God, I become that visible expression of God’s thoughts concerning me, being spoken as Word and living in my heart.

I am receiving God into myself, yet I am also receiving me into myself. For I am not and have never been anything other than God’s thoughts concerning me expressed through Jesus.

As I am writing, I am expressing two specific verses. I will include the whole context from John, but only the relevant part from Hebrews.

In the beginning [the source, the generation of life] {Christ Jesus} in action was the word, and the word actively was towards God, and God was actively the word. The same was in the source, the generation of life, towards God. All through Him became, and without him not even one thing became that has become. In Him was actively life, and the life was actively the light of men. And the light is made visible in the darkness and the darkness did not seize hold of it (John 1:1-5).

God, having… spoken us inside His Son, whom He appointed heir of all, through whom He made [formed] the ages {the unfolding of our lives}, who, being the radiance [expression or revelation] of His glory and the character or exact expression [image] of His substance, carrying [upholding or sustaining] all, moreover, by the word of His power… (Hebrews 1:1-3 – reduced).

My discussion is simply the realization that these profound statements are already our continuous and practical existence.

Word as thoughts is the Father; Word spoken is the Son. Word unfolding as expression is me. Nonetheless, at no point in the unfolding of God’s thoughts becoming me does God ever violate me as separate from my permission.

For that reason, we must come back to ME knowing ME as I really am coming every moment out from my Father.

My knowing of ME coming out from my Father every moment can begin ONLY as I first know that Jesus, Word spoken into me, has already become me in all that I am. Unless I am rooted utterly into that knowing, I will never move forward into salvation.

You see, Christ is without limitation, most certainly, but the question is always HOW? And always there are two answers. The common answer in darkened Christianity is that Christ (separate from you) is without limitation, so you should be without limitation or weakness, so you had better pretend with all your might to be like something you don’t know so that other Christians will think that you are “like Christ.”

But our knowing of an unlimited Christ is found inside a different universe. We know that Christ is unlimited in His ability to become and to share every limitation and inability – and every ability and joy, known by each one who belongs to Him, no matter how many that might be. Christ is unlimited in His capacity, not only for symmorphy, that is, for being what we find ourselves to be, but for joining Father with us as well.

So, my knowing God’s thoughts concerning me becoming me in all that I am begins with my utter rest in the absolute truth that I AM. That I am, first, incapable of making such a thing happen, and that God is, second, already making His knowledge becoming me the only reality I know or have ever known.

Our problem is that Adam rejected God becoming Adam. Because Adam lusted after the “super-Christ” instead. “I don’t like me; I don’t like God becoming me; I want to look like that guy, all bright and shiny in his heavenly appearance!”

Yet I look at my life. It is very small and very dull. I rarely go out of the house. I work on my computer as long as my brain allows (I got only five hours sleep last night, after which I could not sleep.) Then, I have to sit and wait till I can go to bed again so I can have another few hours to write Jesus singing in my heart.

Yet that becomes a gross contradiction. For I have written about Christian Community and made great proclamations about “calling it forth.” Yet nothing happens. And here I sit. Some would say, “Well, that Yordy fellow sure doesn’t have God moving on his behalf.”

My knowing of God’s knowing of me begins, that is, SALVATION begins, in my acceptance that my dull and narrow life IS the unfolding of God’s expression of Himself as me inside my present NOW, regardless of, and even including, all the huge contradiction.

You see, I defeat Adam by being thankful that I AM the expression of God.

That’s where it begins, but that is not where it ends.

Salvation, then, is a process of discovery.

Let’s go back to our lostness AND our vulnerability. I think about my knowledge of God versus how most of my fellow believers know “Christianity.” And when I try to explain how I know God on, say, Facebook, I find that it is very difficult because Christians live inside the tree of knowing right and wrong, and the moment you try to explain to them something found inside the tree of life, you find yourself using the terminology of the old. And thus you quickly get dragged back down into the mire of words that exist only inside of confused separation from God.

You cannot get from the tree of knowledge to the tree of life. You can be in the tree of life ONLY as you believe that you already are.

But our problem is our vast story of ourselves, filled with all kinds of life experiences, and prejudices, habits and pieces of knowledge, arguments and daydreams, all swirling around inside of a bubble of vulnerability that can shatter so easily if too much comes too fast.

Since God cannot sin, coming into our knowledge too much too fast never enters His mind. And thus we are stuck in this partial mode of bit by bit discovering our actual and living connection with all of God’s thoughts concerning us, that is, the Lord Jesus sent into us.

And so our obtaining the knowing, piece by piece of the total and absolute GOODNESS in which alone we live, requires much time and much cleverness on God’s part in inserting just the right amount in just the right way. Along with the ongoing permission that we express by speaking what God speaks concerning us – but without “getting rid of” our own human story.

You can’t just burst Salvation into people, no matter how born again or filled with the Spirit they might be. You can love salvation there, and you can teach the good things of Christ inside of them. But each one must speak Christ as their only life until their thinking changes bit by bit until they KNOW that God is revealing His own thoughts now as them inside of and through their very small and limited humanity.

I did mention the end of salvation. Let me re-iterate the full explosion of all God-Power in our lives forever. Are you ready?

Little acts of kindness and gentle words of encouragement.

Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts. God revealing Himself to all.

Yet it is this working of God’s psychology, the careful step-by-step winning of hearts and minds out of the confused darkness of a nonexistent lostness, without ever violating their persons, this is a subject, coming out from this morning’s rambling, that I hope to know ever more fully. For this is how we set creation free; this is how we save the lost.