I really enjoyed reading this. It's very thought-provoking on the subject of maturing, growth, and shifting perceptions. Also, the dialogue/storytelling style worked really well. The pace flowed nicely and it was effective at showing the overall important message of love and understanding.
I thought this line was especially powerful: "“Maturing is about learning how to see everyone with the vision of your mind. Only with such vision can you see the light of love talking to you in everyone and those who do not see it in themselves."
Hi George, I have read this article a couple of times or more.
Yes it is hard to love your enemy. In fact it can be so difficult to the point of making me feel an upheaval within me.
In the middle of March when I actually figured out what kinds of things trump was doing in the name of the USA, I was angry. Not to the point of hate but very upset that his behavior was being tolerated.
The more I watched and the angrier I became the more puzzled I became that more people were just acting like everything is normal.
In that frustration I felt I posted some things that crossed my usual line of respect. I was getting into hate.
I brought up the whole question to a pastor I know about how 4 pastors I know haven’t said anything about the whole situation. I didn’t think the would say anything from the pulpit but maybe post it on line.
This made me remember that God wants us to love everyone. And also recognizing “love” as a verb - how could I love trump and his regime.
I’m not acquainted with any of these people so I cannot talk to them. The only thing open to me is to pray for them.
I realized that people whose actions are so extreme as this crew, they must have had a large set of negativity in their growing years. Then I felt sad for them.
I did pray for them. And I did feel bad for them inspite of their actions. I do not condone their actions and actually have some fear of the results of their actions. But I also feel sad for who they are inside of themselves.
So I pray they could feel something from who I believe God is and choose a more moral way to fix what they see as wrong with our country. I would not say that to their faces. I would expect that to just help fuel their fire.
So now I feel almost overwrought between what I hope for and what I see.
Now I pray for help in trusting my God throughout all these circumstances saying I know God uses all things to the good of God’s people. Although I must repeat this part every time I hear another thing I think is outrageous coming from trump and crew.
I have, as you see, settled on just enough disrespect of him to use the lowercase on his written name.
Thank you Dianne and I share your burden. We started this journey with child-like faith but now, I am sorry to say, that faith has become the problem. Let me explain. The essence of our faith is trust in Name (God or Life depending on our beliefs), trust working through our spiritual blindness because we cannot see Him. This is blindness in our mind, which is the eyes of our heart.
We see images of bad people doing bad things or hear of it and imagine such images. Our mind takes these images and, as the eyes of our heart, engages our heart with them. We feel what we think they mean—while our mind is blind to the light of Name in such people, preventing our heart from feeling Name’s love for them.
When it is time for us to learn how to see with the “mind of our heart”, faith makes us want to stay blind and we think we are only imagining things. We remember verses that say no one has ever seen Name but forget the ones that say people do. No, our physical eyes are not made to see the light of Name, but that is exactly what our spiritual eyes are made to do.
Stop trying to love the enemies of conscience blindly. Read the last section “Challenges to Transformation” in this article.
“We cannot put new wine in old wineskin.” This explains the upheaval you feel in yourself when trying to love your enemies. There’s great love bottled up in you Dianne, but using the same old images in your mind to access it will never work. The new images I’m referring to free the heart for God’s infinite love to work in us.
Paul said that love grows immensely in knowledge and all perception. The knowledge Jesus taught includes new perception of everyone. Paul also said that “even though we knew Jesus according to the flesh (images that are great for faith only), we no longer know him this way or anyone.” This indicates knowing him and everyone else according to spirit, perception that makes love grow immensely.
I enjoyed the dialogue format.
I really enjoyed reading this. It's very thought-provoking on the subject of maturing, growth, and shifting perceptions. Also, the dialogue/storytelling style worked really well. The pace flowed nicely and it was effective at showing the overall important message of love and understanding.
I thought this line was especially powerful: "“Maturing is about learning how to see everyone with the vision of your mind. Only with such vision can you see the light of love talking to you in everyone and those who do not see it in themselves."
The light of love in you is very humbling.
Hi George, I have read this article a couple of times or more.
Yes it is hard to love your enemy. In fact it can be so difficult to the point of making me feel an upheaval within me.
In the middle of March when I actually figured out what kinds of things trump was doing in the name of the USA, I was angry. Not to the point of hate but very upset that his behavior was being tolerated.
The more I watched and the angrier I became the more puzzled I became that more people were just acting like everything is normal.
In that frustration I felt I posted some things that crossed my usual line of respect. I was getting into hate.
I brought up the whole question to a pastor I know about how 4 pastors I know haven’t said anything about the whole situation. I didn’t think the would say anything from the pulpit but maybe post it on line.
This made me remember that God wants us to love everyone. And also recognizing “love” as a verb - how could I love trump and his regime.
I’m not acquainted with any of these people so I cannot talk to them. The only thing open to me is to pray for them.
I realized that people whose actions are so extreme as this crew, they must have had a large set of negativity in their growing years. Then I felt sad for them.
I did pray for them. And I did feel bad for them inspite of their actions. I do not condone their actions and actually have some fear of the results of their actions. But I also feel sad for who they are inside of themselves.
So I pray they could feel something from who I believe God is and choose a more moral way to fix what they see as wrong with our country. I would not say that to their faces. I would expect that to just help fuel their fire.
So now I feel almost overwrought between what I hope for and what I see.
Now I pray for help in trusting my God throughout all these circumstances saying I know God uses all things to the good of God’s people. Although I must repeat this part every time I hear another thing I think is outrageous coming from trump and crew.
I have, as you see, settled on just enough disrespect of him to use the lowercase on his written name.
Thank you Dianne and I share your burden. We started this journey with child-like faith but now, I am sorry to say, that faith has become the problem. Let me explain. The essence of our faith is trust in Name (God or Life depending on our beliefs), trust working through our spiritual blindness because we cannot see Him. This is blindness in our mind, which is the eyes of our heart.
We see images of bad people doing bad things or hear of it and imagine such images. Our mind takes these images and, as the eyes of our heart, engages our heart with them. We feel what we think they mean—while our mind is blind to the light of Name in such people, preventing our heart from feeling Name’s love for them.
When it is time for us to learn how to see with the “mind of our heart”, faith makes us want to stay blind and we think we are only imagining things. We remember verses that say no one has ever seen Name but forget the ones that say people do. No, our physical eyes are not made to see the light of Name, but that is exactly what our spiritual eyes are made to do.
Stop trying to love the enemies of conscience blindly. Read the last section “Challenges to Transformation” in this article.
https://georgeallenbooks.substack.com/p/spirituality-and-sexuality?r=4pmgma
Ok
“We cannot put new wine in old wineskin.” This explains the upheaval you feel in yourself when trying to love your enemies. There’s great love bottled up in you Dianne, but using the same old images in your mind to access it will never work. The new images I’m referring to free the heart for God’s infinite love to work in us.
Paul said that love grows immensely in knowledge and all perception. The knowledge Jesus taught includes new perception of everyone. Paul also said that “even though we knew Jesus according to the flesh (images that are great for faith only), we no longer know him this way or anyone.” This indicates knowing him and everyone else according to spirit, perception that makes love grow immensely.
Hi George! I am pretty tired this afternoon. I figured out ho to look your work up. I will try tomorrow afternoon
Thanks Dianne, much appreciated!
Powerful story, thank you for sharing!
Appreciate you taking the time to read it and comment.