How
might you still be spiritually “blind” or “dumb”? How can
Jesus heal your sight and speech? (Serendipity Bible 10th
Anniversary Edition, page 1352).
This
question lies at the heart of the ills that afflict mankind—for
these afflictions do not lie in material ingenuity (mankind has
ingenuity aplenty to master any challenge in the material world) but
the challenge is to master himself. In a breathtakingly sweeping
way, man lacks self-knowledge and regularly overestimates his ability
to know himself and the spiritual tone and tenor of reality. Forget
sin if you choke on that word, consider man’s deeply flawed
perception as that relates to the nature and importance of
intangibles—of principles governing the spiritual as contrasted
with the material world. While man accedes to the importance of
truth, virtue, wisdom, love, honesty, faithfulness, humility,
integrity, courage—he consistently assumes he knows what these
concepts mean, while in fact he is projecting his own fears and
prejudices—his tone and tenor—upon them. We make of these terms
and concepts a Rorschach test. In other words, we in practice assume
that these are not intangible realities at all, but rather are
subjective extensions of man’s mind—that they are the result of
man’s ingenuity rather than having an eternal source—that
relativism rules in the end. Thus, an essential purpose of
monotheism is to attest to the truth of these principles—their
truth is so regardless of what we may say about them. In this sense,
religion is estranged from language fabrications for believers insist
that at the heart of the matter lays fact not subjectivity with its
estrangement from objective Spirit. An eternal God is the initiator
and creator and man the created receiver. When all is said and done,
God is proactive and man reactive.
Jesus
came to emphasize the importance of tone and tenor—of spiritual
reality as received as opposed to the letter of the law—an
insidious cop-out projection of man. Jesus gave us a tool to help
redeem ourselves and the world. We are to tune ourselves to the
chords of sevanthood—being servants of God first and man
thereafter. Thus, in the image of God and all He stands for, man will
make creativity an expression of servanthood, as likewise in the
intangible realms.
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