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There is mystery
throughout the revelation of God. The earliest recorded history of God’s
interaction into the physical world contains the cryptic creation of
male and female, distinct in their individual personalities yet each
existing only through the other. It continues with the incomprehensible
gathering of all ethnic groups, genders, and statuses of life into a
kingdom where there is neither Jews nor Greeks, males nor females,
masters nor slaves. It concludes with the mystery of mysteries, the
manifestation of the risen Christ coming into the world of men to bring
order out of disorder, harmony out of disharmony, and atonement out of
separation. The outworking of the life of God in man has always been
mysterious to man.
The essence of the mystery lies in the fact that man is a flesh and
blood creature that has been animated by the Spirit of God. Being a
creature of two different natures, he is caught in a world of physics
yet the essence of life is nonphysical. In other words, man always
experiences life in a physical setting yet it is never the physical
setting that produces the life that is being experienced.
With the fleshly mind of man given the capability to interact with
intellectual thoughts, emotional feelings, and willful acts, the human
experience is grounded in the knowledge of the Divine. Man can know,
appreciate, and worship the God who created him. The magnificent sensory
network of his body allows him to experience the glory and the power of
the Divine--the heavenly realm.
It is the reality of experiencing the heavenly in the earthly that not
only enables man to know the spiritual with his mind but it also gives
the opportunity for the fleshly to dominate the spiritual in his mind.
The same interaction of intellectual thoughts, emotional feelings, and
willful acts that makes it possible to know, to appreciate, and to
worship God brings with it the possibility of that intellect, emotion,
and will to turn from God in his mind. The capability of knowing what
the mind is experiencing automatically gives the mind the possibility to
interpret what it is experiencing.
Being capable to interpret what he is experiencing enables man to not
only know, appreciate, and worship God but also to misinterpret his
experiences. It is this susceptibility to misinterpret that gives man
the possibility to perceive that he can actually control his
experiences. Desiring for control, he then moves into the illusion that
he is responsible for his life. The ultimate illusion of man is the
belief that he can make life happen by the power of his own thinking.
When man attempts to control life, man’s intellect (the sensing
network) becomes the center of his existence. The living or the
experiencing of life itself then becomes the object of his existence.
Moreover, when life becomes the object of man’s existence by the use
of the mind in the attempt to control life, the simplicity or the
innocence of life is lost. Man has fallen and the good life is no more.
Mysteriously, life is not the object of man’s existence in which he
attempts to produce life. Life is the subject, or the substance of man’s
existence itself. Therefore, living in harmony with life is the path to
the good life. Coming to understand the ways of life, through the
revelation of Jesus Christ as life, is the secret of the rich, full
completed life. |
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