ON SELF: The Levels

I want to continue with the discussion on our self and the representation I use for it. Below I have shown the model [PEMS] we used previously and a new way of portraying it as overlapping levels that get larger from the physical to the human spirit. This enlarging aspect shows the “real-ness” of the levels. We somewhat haughtily think of our physical-ness being what is real and meaningful in our lives. We then tend to think that the real-ness diminishes as we move to our emotions on to our mental makeup with our spiritual level being the least real. However, I have found that thinking exactly the opposite makes more sense and creates a more rational way of looking at life. Both models are the same PEMS and represent the same thing; it just seems to be a better way of looking at it if we break the model into more parts.

The body is our PEMS. The Holy Spirit is ex-body, God incarnate, who invades our spirit as we permit it to, becoming our guidance throughout life as a personal part of our being. Our PEMS is human, living; the Spirit is not human, not living. When God has become a part of our spirit [s], we then become a part of the universal Soul (God). The Soul is made up of all beings living or dead, and we have virtually no idea what it is or what it is like. God has revealed almost nothing about it, although inquestioning the spiritual realm is a popular subject. And, John’s Revelation writing is particularly intriguing. Much of modern end times writing is highly speculative, novelistic inquestioning, but for some persons this type of inquestioning is their “thing.” And, it is spiritual thinking, so who am I to question God’s call on another’s fellowship with Him.

In the previous paragraph I used the word “who” in referencing God and even hypothesized an afterlife. I do strongly believe in “life” after earthly death, but for me it is an act of futility to study eschatological “events,” afterlife God actions, through earthly, secular eyes. We humans are finite, and when we need to refer to God, we use what we have and know—human characteristics. A major one is the use of anthropomorphizing God. We do it in many ways; even my use of “Him” tends to make us think person. I personally prefer to think that I am making God personal to me rather than personalizing Him. However, I realize that it is a matter of semantics. I do think that it is doing most of us a disservice to use such terms as “trinity” and “three-in-one” to help us understand God's personal ness. It may have been a help to early Christians, but today it often creates an irrational concept that most of us cannot reconcile into our belief system. God is God; He can use any “form” He wants at any time He wants. I believe that at times, that form might even be human, even today; however, limiting Him to human-like characteristics could limit Him in our own minds, and that is a major problem in trying to learn as much about His truth as we can. God has no limit(s). Nevertheless, I’m sure there must be some persons for whom it helps their belief fundamentals to think in this manner.  If so, so be it.

Let’s look in more detail at the levels:

[p] The actual physical part of the body is ex-living. It is what we study in biology and chemistry as the concoction of atoms and molecules that together make up our anatomy. These atoms and molecules are individually non-living, but when these molecules are combined, there is a magical change that takes place, and chemistry gives this magic the name of organic. Isn’t it remarkable that chemists refer to two “different” kinds of matter—inorganic molecules (non-living) and organic molecules (living). Of course, there is only one kind of matter, and we see it laid out in the Periodic Table showing the atomic mass of the elements. God used a recurring, serial organization to make up all matter, living and non-living. Early chemists made up the two classes of study, and I can’t help but think it was developed by a chemist inquestioning the concept. The whole idea sounds like a delicious study for an inquestion research study. Can you imagine what kind of wonderful message learning could be done if jealous religionists would turn scientists loose to inquestion along with their physical research, rather than sectioning them off into a world they have had to create on their own.

[pe] The interaction of the physical and emotional is the part of the body where hormones and other chemicals produced in the me affect the physical body p. Here is where the actions, the results, of our emotions are exhibited—anger, depression, fear, sorrow, physical love, happiness, pleasure, satisfaction, pain, etc. The pe is also the level where our organs and nervous system operate—sight, hearing, touch, taste, movement, etc. It is the main part of our body checked and changed by the medical world. When drugs are taken, their actions change the makeup of our pe. We consider our pe to be an immensely important part of our self.

[em] The emotional/mental is the level where hormones are produced from feedback from the pe and signals from the ms. These interactions occur in the medulla oblongata and the pituitary/hippocampus areas of the brain. Please understand that all parts of the brain and the chemicals themselves are physical in nature; however, the production of the messages, the messages themselves, are of a higher nature than the physical makeup of the body. The emotions listed under pe are controlled here. Such actions as happiness or depression, as examples, can be produced without any help from the spirit as happiness is a physical phenomenon. Signals from the physical sent to the mental generate a feeling of happiness which is completely separated from the spirit.

[ms] The mental/spirit is the part of the body where the spirit interacts with the mental makeup of self. It is where you recognize your self as a person. It is your consciousness and your conscience. It is where your spirit works with the body. It is where you choose between right and wrong. The spirit is always sending “right” signals, and your physical is always sending worldly signals. They meet in the ms which then sends signals, chemical and nervous, to the body to react in some way. If you permit your spirit to have input, you gain satisfaction in your life and do the “right” things. If you block your spirit, the source of inbred good in a self, you then depend on worldly signals for your ms considerations and ponderings. This leads to bad things. All inquestioning occurs in the ms. Joy, the joy that Paul talks about in his writings, comes from allowing the spirit into your ms, using that “information” in your life, and thus doing the “right” things thus sending “right” signals back to the ms.

[s] This is the body's spirit, a diminutive mirroring of His Spirit and uses that as a way of communication. We all "know" things we never experienced or learned; that is our spirit. We all have longings that are "felt" deep within us; that is our spirit. We all have a conscience that makes us "understand" what is right and wrong; that is our spirit. We all have an innate yearning to praise; that is our spirit. That praise is often showered on other humans and animals. It is sometimes given to inanimate objects like mountains and the ocean and sunsets.

[Spirit] Spirit is the personal nature of God’s interacting with individuals. This interaction is called by Christians “being a Christian” and “being born again” and “being saved” and “having a personal relationship with God” and “following Jesus” and “being one in the spirit.” Joy results from our spirit interaction with the Spirit, which infiltrates through the spirit into the mental creating satisfaction which then can, but not always, infiltrate our emotions creating actions that were influenced by the Spirit.

ON SELF: The Basics

There are few things in life that has more meaning than a satisfying way of being your self, and few there are who attain it. Even Christians, who have a sense of God’s forgiveness, almost never attain the level of Paul’s satisfaction (often translated using the word joy [cara, chara]. We sing about it, we thank God in our prayers for it, we tell other people how great it is being Christian, but inside, few are really satisfied with their selves. Reasons for this are numerous and will not be discussed here at this time, but suffice it to say that the major reason is that most of us do not understand who our self is. Let’s learn what I mean when I use the word self.

The Christians of the first century had a hard time explaining self and so did the Greeks before them; today, we have a similar dilemma. Various ways have been tried, but Jesus in his Greatest Commandment teaching divided self into physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual and we will use that classification. Jesus “introduced” this concept in several places with the most familiar being

• Matthew 22:37, NIV. Jesus replied: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”   

• Mark 12:30, NIV. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”  

• Luke 10:27, NIV. “He answered: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.” 

Without a study of the Old Testament, we might think these words and concepts to be part of the teachings of Jesus. However, a careful study shows Jesus to be proclaiming a Jewish belief.  

• Deuteronomy 6:5, NIV. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.  

• Deuteronomy 6:5, KJV. And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

Although the words, physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual are combined and/or translated somewhat differently by the different writers and translators (and that continues throughout the Bible), I take Jesus to mean here that a self has a physical makeup (strength), emotional makeup (heart), mental makeup (mind), and spiritual makeup (soul). There are several verses where heart (kardia, kardia) is used to mean the spirit. Soul (yuch, psuche, psoo-khay) is the word used by Jesus here to mean a self’s spirit, and I will translate it to mean the highest aspect of the self–spirit–with a small s. The Holy Spirit (πnεumα, pneuma, pnyoo'-mah is often used in the scriptures) will always have a capital S, usually simply the word Spirit. Seeing these interpretations and the manipulations we have to go through in understanding these few biblical words, we can start to see the glorious game that God has given to us for fellowshipping with Him. In these verses, Jesus, in one of His basic teachings, “introduces” God as Spirit for the self both in word and in deed, an awe-inspiring inquestion.

Let us start a graphic to help in our study of self:

This is a representation of who I am and who you are. Note that this representation places the physical part of self on the bottom and the spiritual part at the top. This merely indicates the general interaction of the parts or levels as I call them. A self is the shared whole of these parts. We must remember that any representational scheme is just that—representational. It is not real; it only represents something that is real, something that helps us understand something else that cannot be directly represented. In this case, the quandary we face is how to represent a 3 dimensional body, with an illusional mind, and a spirit that defies explanation or description.

The self is the “box” with the body we see and the consciousness of self represented by the gradation of grayscale of the whole self. We "see" our selves most within the physical and less as we move toward the spiritual. When the New Testament writers speak of the body, they generally mean the physical, emotional, and mental levels. The person’s body is often dichotomized from the spirit. We will not do that, although I believe that it is our spirit that is real with the body housing the spirit for a time. A person, self, is physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual--a body. Additionally, the Holy Spirit (God) is available to the body and is “incorporated” as part of the body when we believe and seek, sometimes by Christians called becoming a Christian. Otherwise, the Spirit would be missing from the presentation, although, in actuality, I believe God occasionally presents Himself through non-believers too. Persons who are not seekers allow the body to run their lives, as there is no pilot direction from the Spirit. As a Christian, we look to the Spirit for guidance to one extent or another. If we were to be completely holy (probably impossible), we would require the Spirit to completely control our selves, vertical, top-down control.

Summarizing, we can produce the following:

1. physical (strength): We will envision that the physical level of our self means the aspect of self that we can see and perceive—skin, bones, organs, brain, etc. Granted, this seeing and perceiving is seen and perceived through our thinking, but it is the part of us that would be there whether we could think or not, living or not living. It is the interaction of the various atoms and molecules of the non-living, inorganic elements in our world.

2. emotional (heart): This is our feeling self, the presentation of our living psyche. Our brain produces constituents that “make” the physical part of the body act in a certain manner. In a healthy body the physical self has no control over these chemical aspects of the emotional self and will act blindly to whatever is “sent” to it.

3. mental (mind): This is our thinking self, the aspect of our self that makes us who we are. As with the emotional, the mental also is directed by chemicals, but amazingly, it has control over what chemicals are produced and where they are used. The mental uses the physical brain and the organic emotional chemicals, but thinking is an operation outside of the cellular makeup of the body yet an integral part of it.

4. spirit (soul): It is the spirit that causes the most trouble in explanation. The body (physical, emotional, and mental) has been studied scientifically century after century and is known quite well. But the spirit is another thing. It is “who” we really are. It is eternal as the body of God. It is recognized as the consciousness that makes us know we exist. It is the part of self that accommodates God as the Holy Spirit and allows Him to “speak” to us. Where we speak through bodily words and actions, God speaks to our illusional mind through a Spiritual extra sensory perception.

5. Spirit: This is the Holy Spirit, God incarnate who appears to inhabit our spirit if a self recognizes Him. This overlapping or infilling is God’s “personal” association with His “children.” This relationship evolves through a person’s life, and it has been evolving on the gross level over all time. We know more about the Word (God’s imparted message to the world) today than the early Christians knew, and much more than the Jews of the Old Testament days. Since that represents so much time for our very finite minds, we might think we would know the Spirit well; however, God is jealous about revealing His self to us. We know practically nothing about Him.

ON BELIEF

You have to believe before you can believe you believe.

One day God was walking down a path on Earth. He came to a man and asked him, “What do you believe?”
The man scratched his head and said, “I believe the earth is round.”
God said, “Yes, I know; I created the earth and even your thinking that it is round.”
God then came to another man, and He said, “What do you believe?”
The man said, “I believe we are what we believe we are.”
God replied, “Yes, I know; I created your mind, but belief is not what you believe.”
God then came to a man with a big smile and said, “What do you believe?”
The man grinned and said, “I believe everything!”
God said, “Yes, I created everything, but everything to you is not everything.
God went on and met a stern-looking man on the path and said to him, “What do you believe?”
The man frowned and immediately said, “I believe nothing.”
God said to him, “Yes, I also created nothing, but nothing is something.”
God wondered as He wandered and He came to another man and said to him, “What do you believe?”
The man thought for a minute and said, “I believe practically everything and virtually nothing.”
“Welcome into the Kingdom of Heaven.” said God, surprised and satisfied.

The foundation of belief is "faithing" that God is! There actually is no other word to explain it. We might use perceiving but that is too emotional or we might use understanding but that is too mental. I think we are hardwired toward spiritual faithing. Although some say they don’t believe, they continue to have faith in their next breath; they still continue to have faith that the food they put in their mouth is going to go to the right place in their bodies and keep them alive; they still continue to have faith that the earth is in a planetary system with natural laws that will let the sun come up tomorrow. There is an inborn tendency to have Godly faith that is violated when we say we have no faith.

Placing the next layer on our God is! foundation then becomes a simpler proposition. However, I’ve found that many find this a more difficult labor. Until we believe that God created!, we will find it hard to really believe and be faithfully anxious because we don’t believe. Often, we don’t admit it to ourselves and that psychological deviation throws our whole belief system in disarray. Think about how most Christians believe—they say they believe “God created the heavens and Earth.” They have heard the words from Genesis. They might say, “Of course I believe the words of Genesis; it is in the Bible!” And, this might be stated with some finality. Saying you believe because of words may be enough for some but not for many.

Even so, believing that God created! introduces a great, as I call it, at-odds-with-rationality problem. We are asked to believe that God created us just as we are with all our virtues and intrinsic worth, and since God created!, it follows that He created us with all our faults and blemishes too? If God created our faults, does this mean that He created what we are going to do and be forever? There belief hits a snag. We can’t believe that God created bad things we do or that happen to us because that is too close to God also controls everything about us including what we do. And, if this is so, where does free will fit into the picture? So, we just ignore this aspect of belief.

Scientists have a way of “believing” that is foreign to non-scientists—they believe nothing is a fact, at least on a mass basis. There are facts, but we can only “believe” in what works. Individual scientists have their own set of facts, but they never let these facts interfere with how they search for what really works because the next experiment might “change the facts.” They understand that personal facts are not always what really works. I have even seen extremely competent scientists run an experiment several times because they just know from their personal set of facts that the results can’t be right. In the end, they change their set of facts to mesh with the tested results.  Christians could take a lesson from this type of thinking; unfortunately, it generally only comes from years of scientific thinking. And yes, scientific thinking colors all of my belief.

The following summarizes my understanding of the four levels of belief:

1. The physical level. This involves the things we do as believers. To start with, we might need to make our self do these things such as read the Bible, go to church services, pray to God, etc. Christians might call such actions worship, but technically, it is not the physical action that is the worship; worship is the interaction of the physical self with the individual spirit coalescing these four levels.


2. The emotional level. A second level would be the things we feel as we are doing belief things. Surprisingly, these emotions are elicited easily, at least by most persons, and they are extremely enjoyable. For some, this is the level where faith actually begins and most worship lies.


3. The mental level. If we were to be technical about it, we would say that everything happens in our brain so all is controlled in the mental. For our purposes here, we can say that the mental level is where we learn how to look into the spirit, where we figure out our belief, and where we inquestion spiritual contemplation.


4. The spiritual level. Our spiritual level is a vacuum that can be filled only by God’s infilling. I believe that the perfection that is God is always there, but we don’t always give Him complete access to the rest of our lives. If things could be completely pure in our spirit, God (Holy Spirit) through our spirit, would control our mental thinking, which controls our emotions, which controls our physical actions.  We would be perfect. However, since have our lives to live in this world and not in the spirit, no one can do this. No matter who we are, we only allow God access to a portion of our self.

This is my belief groundwork. There is little about our believing in God and Spiritual things that are clear and present on a mass basis, but as Paul counsels us in Phillipians 2, each of us must work out our own belief system with fear and trembling.  Here is mine.  Please forgive the tremor!

THE MEANING OF WORDS

Who's on First?

Costello: Are you the manager? 
Abbott: Yes. 
Costello: You gonna be the coach too? 
Abbott: Yes. 
Costello: And you don't know the fellows' names. 
Abbott: Well I should. 
Costello: Well then who's on first? 
Abbott: Yes. 
Costello: I mean the fellow's name. 
Abbott: Who. 
Costello: The guy on first. 
Abbott: Who. 
Costello: The first baseman. 
Abbott: Who. 
Costello: The guy playing... 
Abbott: Who is on first! 
Costello: I'm asking you who's on first. 
Abbott: That's the man's name. 
Costello: That's who's name? 
Abbott: Yes. 
Costello: Well go ahead and tell me. 
Abbott: That's it. 
Costello: That's who? 

Listen to the whole bit here.


Mere words mean nothing; words with a brain attached mean something and sometimes everything. All writing is words made up of an alphabet of letters, which are merely squiggly lines, which are merely bits of lead or ink on a piece of paper, which is merely small bits of wood, which is even smaller molecules and atoms, and we could go even further until we come down to energy, little bits of nothingness. In essence, words are not the squiggly lines but something that happens in the reader’s imagination. However, we often do not treat words as such. The squiggly lines sometimes become magic, taking on meaning of and in themselves as if they were a self. Words are the same in all the books in the world; sometimes the squiggly lines making up the letters are different, but words on paper are words and just words. It is what we think of when we are presented with the squiggly lines—the message represented—that is all important! For us in this discussion, the words of the Bible can hold a special, personal Message—how the Spirit interacts with humanity. That is the purpose of this study, to learn a little about how we experience God; how we, individually, interact with God in our lives. We study the words we have from the Bible or from other persons.  These words instruct us in how to interact with each other and God; and the words contain some of the inquestion "answers" we so desperately seek.

I have been intrigued with foreign languages and especially what the speakers of these languages associate with the words they use. Do they think the same thoughts when presented with the same word in their language? I have deduced that they do not and neither do we. In fact, two different individuals seeing the same word in the same language do not think the exact same thing. This being the case today, it was also the case in biblical times. Until I learned a little biblical Greek, I could not appreciate what the early Christians were thinking and by extrapolation, the messages they were experiencing. Of course, I still can't, but perhaps we can come closer knowing something about the language in which the early writers wrote. On the whole, biblical interpreters (all translators are interpreters) of the Bible have done his or her best to faithfully translate the words as they thought they should be translated, and it follows that each interpretation is unique. (See here for my attempt at Bible interpretation.)  Every one of these interpreters is a different person with different experiences and revealed messages; therefore, their interpretations have to be different. From reading the various translations they have produced, it is clear that the same Greek word is translated by different translators using different English words and by definition different thinking in the reader. They sometimes justify this application by stating that English has many different words for the same Greek word and then intimating that they know what words should be used in the interpretation, and for each one of them individually, they do. However, did the early Christian writers think many different things when they wrote a certain word, or did they think different thoughts when a certain word was associated with other words, or did each person think whatever he or she was predetermined to think from his or her experience?  Let’s look at how we think irregardless as to what is causing us to think this way.

Ponder on what you think about when you hear a word—for instance, think these words; sky . . . light . . . love . . . work . . . book . . . see . . . . Your experiences have taught you what to think each time you see each of these particular sets of letters without them being associated with other words. But, while you thought your own thoughts about these words, did the next person reading them think the exact same thing as you? Almost certainly not. However, we can only guess at how differently different persons think? We will never know completely because we are only our self, not somebody else. However, in studying twins who have the same DNA (virtually) but not the same experiences, psychologists have learned how much they think alike, and by inference how much non-twins think differently. Complicating this process is the fact that all languages have words with two or more completely different meanings (although word scientists can often find root meanings that relate them). For instance, the word run (moving fast, hole in hose, and scoring in baseball) has at least three completely different definitions getting their meaning from the associated words.

The early Christians who wrote the Bible had this major quandary: how to explain an inspired Godly message that offered no direct explanation?[1] Each had an inspired part of the message but didn’t know its meaning. They used such words as faith, hope, love, salvation, belief, see, etc. to portray “meaning” that they knew was meaningful to them individually, but they had little understanding and little way to explain them. Today, we have built for 2000 years on their amazing effort. Who is not astounded and overwhelmed at the inspired letters of Paul (actually teachings, extrapolations, and interpretations of Jesus’ messages)? Furthermore, God has worked through many other diverse persons down through the years who have placed their inquestioning contemplations on paper so that we can learn more about our particular messages.

Therefore, just as all the interpreters established their own meaning from the words, we on the receiving end can only individualistically get a personal, not necessarily the exact, message rendered by the author. While there is an ultimate Word and Message,[2] there is no universal message that we mere mortals can discover or even envision; all messages are personal and singular, from God for me and from God for you. Even though many claim it; no individual has the Message. Each of us has his own message, personal bits of the Word from God! These messages—concealed in innuendo; camouflaged in story, parable, and metaphor; contemplated through inquestion; suggested through interpretation; revealed through revelation—are there, ready for me and ready for you to contemplate and master. These messages are a never-ending evolvement by involvement with God. I think God planned it like this to keep us interested (for some of us, fascinated). If He had just laid out the Message for us, we may not value it, and we would not continue to “study to show ourselves approved unto God a workman who needs not be ashamed;”[3] there would be no “need” to fellowship with Him.

[1] Mark 4:11 He told them, "The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables 12 so that, "'they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!' "Isaiah 6:9 He said, "Go and tell this people: "'Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.' 10 Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed."  [2] John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  [3] 2 Timothy 2:15 Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP

Most Christians don’t seem to be particularly impressed with modern, professional, biblical, scholarly research. (I don’t remember ever hearing a reference to Bible Review or other biblical periodicals from the pulpit.) Even though I am somewhat obsessed with the "findings," I also see much biblical research writing as being stilted and pretentious perhaps even trying to separate their research from the riffraff. Such writing, which might be said to be writing for your peers or preaching to the scientific choir, is almost ignored within the general body of the church with the perception that biblical research as an academic discipline cheapens the study of the Gospel. Most Christians would place biblical research outside the domain of spiritual or even gospel understanding. Perhaps surprising for many Christians, many biblical researchers would make the same assertion. On the researcher’s side, inserting spiritual aspects into the studies devalues or even invalidates the results. There is solid precedent for this thinking as that is what science has been doing for many years, and most biblical researchers want more than anything to be scientific, at least in their approach. However, that helps the plight of biblical researchers little, as much of science is under fire from religionists too

Stating the reasoning behind these philosophies is fairly simple, but taking positive action on it is difficult. It might be helpful to understand that the Gospel, the real Message, the Word that underlies all spiritual study is only understandable on an individual basis no matter how it is learned. When Paul says to "earnestly present your self acceptable to God, a worker unashamed, cutting straight the word of truth,"[1] he was talking about an individual studying and learning through his/her self. Of course, it is understood that such learning is done through the body, but the body slowly percolates “seeing” into the spiritual well over a lifetime. When a biblical researcher is performing academic research, his thinking is physical, worldly. The conundrum is this: while a scientific researcher is doing her/his best to make the research scientific, there is always that taint of spiritual “seeing” that tends to make the results appear not particularly valid or reliable, two specific attributes of scientific experimentation sought for by all scientists. Be that as it may, I will conclude that scientific biblical scholarship has been formulated for the good of the religious corporate body while spiritual scholarship is discovered by the individual and is meant only for the individual.
Should we then say that formal biblical research is useless and should not be done? Far from it! Such research is absolutely essential. Academic biblical research adds, perhaps peripherally, to the spiritual knowledge of God’s progressive revelation which is corporate rather than individual. Few members of the laity wish to look at this very important part of God’s plan for spirituality in our lives. I will have much to say about God’s plan of Salvation and progressive revelation in future entries.

A further observation can be made for much of the preaching we hear from our pulpits. Where does it fit in this quandary? While I thoroughly enjoy a well-put-together sermon on worldly viewpoints, such preaching has but little resemblance to the “preaching” (actually teaching) that Jesus presented. Today, preaching is said to be excellent when the hearers are captivated; rather than teaching anything about the Message, a hearer often leaves physically happy rather than spiritually satisfied. Paradoxically, to make them even more palatable, modern heavenly homilies often take on a science influence, even using scientific illustrations and nuances. (I am often amused at the skewed scientific comparisons and conclusions arrived at through the clergy and by the laity.) While it may not be true science in nature, it is biblical, scholarly, explanation science in principle as it is presented on the physical world level. Church hearers get what their world demands they hear even though they look down their collective noses at science. In some ways, it is practically all we, collectively, know how to do.

Be that as it may, I cannot remain negative about preaching and the messages we get from our churches today. Anything we do with the end result being fellowship with God is in my assessment good and pleasing to God since it tends to lead the hearer toward the Word. We just must remember that we won’t get much added to our spiritual satisfaction reservoir if we just use the information gained through worldly means. It is up to each of us to “see” the Word, not the harried preacher to “learn” us the Word.

The same can be said for much of the media—books, music, and movies. There is spiritual learning there also; we just need to “see” it. We all love to read, listen to music, and view movies, and they are quite meaningful in our lives. However, we must remember that it is not the writing or the words of the music or the story in the movie that is important; it is the message behind the writing, the music, the story that contains eternal meaning. Appreciate them, enjoy them, use them, but don’t forget to study and listen for your little personal piece of the Message that can be found in all fellowship with our God. I think God asks—might I say requires—it of each of us.

[1]II Tim 2:15 (KJV) Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. 16 But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness.

METHODOLOGY

A standard methodology for spiritual study has not been established as scientists have developed with science. It may not even be possible as I believe God works individually with each of our spirits, and there doesn’t seem to be exacting methodology in God’s “thinking.” God has ordained that each of us spiritually contemplate (ruminate, muse, revel, chew over, mull, ponder; use the verb that best fits your thinking). Each of us has an inherent longing toward this contemplation. There doesn’t seem to be a precise or even an imprecise way to do this; however, we can see that hundreds of persons down through the years have worked out personal systems and approaches that work for them. I fall into that bailiwick. Moreover, my thinking leans toward the scientific method as that is a part of my training. Here are some of my views on inquestioning methodology.

Spiritual: Thoughts or thinkings, verbal antics, are our only way of conversing with our self. The old adage that "We think, therefore we are!" has validity only when we are talking about God's physical reality. "We are, therefore we think!" is much more compelling for a study of spiritual realities. "We are" portends an architect; "we think" tends to make us the architect. God designed us just as we are, therefore we think.

Even though our “verbal” thinking is our only way to recognize God in our lives, God rarely, if ever communicates verbally. What a conundrum that becomes! As a child, I was constantly waiting for God to speak to me. It was a great disappointment when He never did. When we pray as many of us do, there is generally little communication, through thoughts or insight. We talk to ourselves. Does that make these prayers wrong? Of course not! Any time we are acknowledging God in any way, I would assume He "hears" and "understands." It is all part of what I call the Supreme Game. God requires us to play the game as long as we live. Some play well; others play little.

Recognizing His "voice" comes through immersing our selves (our spirit) into His Spirit), and I call this contemplation. As Christians, we can do this always (praying unceasingly as Paul calls it). However, many don't know how and some don't care, and it is not necessarily an undemanding activity; as a result, it is exceptional when we see it. Contemplation is difficult and foreign to many. Therefore, since the basis for contemplation is thinking but thinking cannot recognize God’s voice, few want to go though this door. However, it is my strong desire to not only to go through the door but to investigate every thing I “see” inside the door and be constantly immersed in it.

True contemplation, our spirit interacting with God’s Spirit, is rare. Most of us are used to real life thinking where persons seek answers, answers, answers; however, God, through life experiences and the Holy Spirit, provides question after question after question. Some real life questions are important, but most are petty, tied to the mundane. Even so, we must ask questions because the answers to our questions are life itself. If you do not ask the question or a more serious dilemma, do not know the question, you probably will never get an answer. It is a sad fact that most people go through life looking for answers to questions they never ask or even know. We must seek questions diligently, and only then will answers be resolved.

Seeking answers to life’s questions is one thing, but be prepared to find that most God questions are not interrogation questions. The English language does not have a word for such questions. The Spirit’s questions are questions that end with a period or exclamation point rather than a question mark. Please give me license to develop a new word for these Spirit questions and christen them inquestions (in-quest-ion). Inquestions are questions that are God given, individual, personal, and eternal, for study, for contemplation, for reveling.

Even though we experience inquestions constantly, we might not recognize one if we see it. I sometimes say that we can recognize inquestions as true “why” questions. Who, what, when, where, and how questions are all part of the physical world; why questions, when using why properly, are always spiritual questions—inquestions. Simple examples might help in gaining some understanding of them.

Picture a sunset. If there ever was a parody, it is a sunset. Why would air, dust and water particles, and photons of light combine to be so beautiful? While this question is a physical question, a part of this world question, a science question if you may, God has chosen to make a combination of these simple earthly building blocks an ultimate inquestion to most of us. Again, picture a sunset—one of the most beautiful sights we ever see. It just is so! There is no earthly reason to it; we just all “see” it. Contemplation for a lifetime cannot begin to answer the Why-this-is-so?! of this experience. Other physical examples could be a snow-covered mountain, a live coral reef, a perfectly formed race horse, a beautiful woman in candle light. These are individual, but we all have inquestions in our lives. For me, I can make an inquestion out of most of God’s creation.  (Have you ever seen a buckyball?)

Spiritual inquestions are abundant. Remember the parable of the sheep and goats[1] with the statement concerning our doing to others as doing to Jesus/God.[2] Could anything be more poignant, severe, suspect, and beautiful, all at the same time? An ultimate inquestion. The “why answer” is in the wonder. Most of the parables could be considered inquestions. Consider all the “Heaven is like . . . .” passages given to us by Jesus. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount has several delightful inquestions. Revelation is one big multi-inquestion.

We can even make up our own inquestions. Consider the following:

There was a certain housewife who desired to bake her husband a beautiful, delicious cake. She took out just the right ingredients measuring out just the right amount of yeast, kneading the dough until it was just right, heating the oven to the ideal temperature, and baking the cake until it was perfect. The husband came home and ate the delicious cake enjoying it without even knowing the ingredients (especially the yeast), the kneading, the heat of the oven, or the time of baking, but the wife knew and remembered.

In the manner you are now contemplating this little anecdote, our spirits inquestion.

Now, let’s look at inquesting our inquestions. While there are questions and inquestions in our life, they are only problematical because we don’t know the answer. Once we learn the answer, it is no longer a question. Moreover, while we often hear comments about ultimate questions, there really are no ultimate questions. God created all the questions and all the answers, and all the inquestions for that matter. All inquestions might be called ultimate questions while a question is temporal, transient.

Some try for earthly God answers for their inquestions; this diverts our focus from the real answer “learned” through contemplation. We seem to “see[3]” better after contemplation with the Spirit. “Answers” to inquestions result in “seeing” better. That is very different from learning. Learning involves answers through the physical, emotional, and mental makeup of the self. They are a part of this world, not a message through the Spirit. When we inquest our inquestions, the “answers” are God given, eternal, and singular.

Scientific: Science is the study of God's creation. Some would like to relegate science into a box outside the realm of the study of God. However, I believe that science is a subset of God's Spirit in the living spirits of His creation.

Scientist’s studying this creation have unintentionally created a methodology which epitomizes an ultimate inquestion—the scientific method. Here is my interpretation of that conviction.

• Observation: Perceiving ("seeing") a part of God's creation in a questioning or inquestioning manner. (Yes, researchers almost always think inquestioningly as they are performing science. Religionists have been so blatant in accusing scientists of blasphemy and sacrilege that non-scientists sometimes miss this side of their thinking.)
• Hypothesis: Guessing at the answers to that questioning based on previous scientific conclusions and theories. (Understand that hypotheses are always based on inquestions; a scientist uses his/her “intuition/sixth sense” to “divine” an answer. How else can we comprehend guessing as an integral component of the exacting process of the scientific method?)
• Experimentation: An examination of the perceived hypothesis by setting up methodic testing using procedural practices recognized by all scientists. (Experimentation is the scientist’s way of getting “answers” to one small part of God’s creation.)
• Results: The outcome of the experimentation that can be repeated by other scientists when the exact same methods are used. (Isn’t it interesting that scientists depend on experimentation that absolutely depends on God’s law of continuity—two experiments will always give the same results if all parameters in both experiments are exactly the same.)
• Conclusions: What the researcher perceives the results mean in conjunction to/with other results from previous experiments. (Might God be working some of His revelation plan through a scientist’s conclusions?)
• Theory: An accumulation of conclusions that interactively work together "explaining" one part of God's creation. (In essence, a characterization of an inquestion.)

There is a relationship between the scientific method and inquestions as science is the study of God's creation, but the spirit/Spirit intertwines at indeterminable ways throughout the whole physical realm. In summary, in tandem with the way God allows us to see and understand it, questions are a part of the physical world and inquestions are a part of the spiritual realm. [1] Matthew 25 [2] Matthew 25:40 (KJV) Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. [3] Matthew 5:8 (NIV) Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

TENETS AND DEFINITIONS

BASIC TENETS

My pursuit of spiritual truth is not about religion as much as it is about relationship.  It is not about intellectualizing God's commands, but about internalizing his truth within my heart as well as my head, an understanding so deep and intimate that it affects not only my thinking, but my behavior as well.  Susan Cosio, This I Believe, 2006

The building blocks of our thinking are shaped definition by definition into precept complementing precept resulting in walls of tenet after tenet. These walls tend to become malformed and weak through crooked attachments, fuzzy thinking, without occasional re-measurement and re-evaluation. This is my attempt at elucidating my building blocks of belief. Remember as you read; these are my tenets. You don’t have the same ones since you are you and I am me. However, something you read of my thinking might just help you in building your walls. For this reason, I am starting this study with a personal inventory of my basic tenets.

God is!—personal, eternal, omnipresent, omnipotent. Everything else is based on this one truth, God is!

God created! everything—natural laws, the universe, life, body, thinking, spirit—everything. Once a person really believes this, it changes everything.

The Bible is the Word of God. The Bible is not the words of God. However, the Word, Message, is offered through the words—translations and interpretations—by divine inspiration. We "learn" the Word from these words spiritually through inquestioning.

The Word of God cannot be and is not meant to be completely understood. God intended this ambiguity to help keep us studying, inquestioning. An individual’s insights are “learned” through the facilitation of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is God’s way of working through individual selves into humanity.

God works through progressive revelation generation after generation. Progressive revelation is God’s will revealed through an individual’s will in a way that changes the collective will of mankind. It is up to the collective generation how much revelation is bestowed. These revelations are given through the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual elements of our collective selves.

Each self is made up of four integrated elements in one entity. We recognize these entities as the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.

God presents Himself throughout His creation in three ways: (1) through the physical laws He has set up to occur by design; (2) through an individual’s spirit; and (3) through performing miracles.

God as the Holy Spirit is the universal Soul and is made a part of an individual’s spirit through our belief and subsequent worship. In the Christian community we use the term that a person becomes a “child of God” through the work of the Holy Spirit.

All persons can become one through the Soul. A person is complete when he/she becomes a part of the Soul, and the overlapping part is then the Holy Spirit working in that self.

We are one with each other through our spirits, which are one with the Spirit.

Every person is personally related to God through his/her spiritual self. It is not necessary to acknowledge this relationship and most don’t, but it is so satisfying to do so.

God occasionally works miracles through any part of His creation. Miracles are rarely recognized as such.

God in love disciplines a person if he/she continuously scorns and mocks the Word. If we continuously study to show ourselves approved, discipline is lessened.

Love, the "shine" of God's Spirit, is a part of all facets of our lives—the physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, and Soul. We see this differently in each element, but they are all related to the Spirit.

DEFINITIONS

The following are my personal definitions of various key words used in these exercises. Please understand that they are presented in this form to help in understanding them, not to present them as in concrete. They are my definitions; perhaps yours have different shades. I will try to use them in the exercises as they are presented here.

body: The makeup of an individual entity--the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual self.

christian: A person who has accepted God’s plan of salvation through Jesus Christ. We might say that all persons in God's creation who have recognized the interaction of God working through the self's spirit by the Holy Spirit are in the same category. The word Christian is a manmade notion. I doubt if God recognizes the word as we do.

emotional self: That part of a self represented by the hormonal/neural effects on the body. It does not exist outside the body.

Holy Spirit (Spirit): What we call the interaction of God with His creation.

inquestion: (a coined word pronounced in-quest-ion): A private, personal query "given" to us by God for our study, contemplation, prayer, enjoyment, and worship and can only be "learned" through the Spirit/spirit.

love/Love: There are four types of love: 1. physical—sexual, erotic actions; 2. emotional—hormonal effects on our body and the natural effects of those hormones; 3. mental—philio love, love for another person; 4. spiritual—Agape Love, the Love that is God as the Spirit.

mental self: That part of a self that is recognized through the process of thinking. The mental (mind) is a part of the body and exists only in a physical body.

Message: God's presentation of the Word, God's will, to individuals.

Miracle: God created individual selves through natural law, and these selves are God's entities on the natural law universe. Any time He does something outside these natural laws, He is working a miracle. Such are probably rare, and we seldom know of their occurrence. It could be that God changes everything including our thinking with each miracle; therefore, we don’t know it happened.

physical self: The part of our self represented by our body parts—toes, heart, skin, brain, etc.

religion: The service, inquestion, study, and worship of God. There are many kinds of religions, all as one, over the world.

Revelation: The actual reception of a fragment of perceived Word.  Revelations are often revealed as a-has while inquestioning.

reveling: The process of willingly inquestioning revelation. 

Soul: A conglomeration of all God's “children” within the Spirit of all time as one.

Spirit: The part of God that is involved in His creation.

spirit: That part of a self which can be imbued by the Spirit. It exists outside the physical body, but is a part of the body in this world. God as Spirit works through a human spirit on a constant basis, but this interaction is not always recognized.

Word: "In the beginning was the Word." We usually perceive the Word through some kind of physical form (message)—Bible, preaching, praying, reveling, inquestioning, etc., but we sometimes "see" the Word through the spirit/Spirit. These latter may be called miracles as God does this personally and individually; however, I would rather think of them as an aspect of God’s created will for mankind.

FIRST WORDS

This writing is begun in the autumn of my life with the strategy of making it a rest-of-my-life contemplation on my personal belief system. Much of it will be what I have been ramdonly thinking about (and writing some) over many years. However, I will try to structure it into some kind of coherent whole.

These exercises are presented with no preconceptions of grandeur. They are reflections of my personal “revelations.” The things of which I write have been personally comprehended over the years and have become so integral to my self that I sometimes find it hard to believe that everybody does not share them. However, I know that God works through each person individually. I would be happy to hear your “revelations.” I like the interaction.

I would be especially pleased to hear from any persons from my past. Some names that stand out are Kenny Shirfic, Ronny Emmons, and Harold Steen, from Washington, Indiana in the 1940s; anybody from the Park Place Church of God, Anderson, Indiana youth group of the 50s; anybody who worked in the photo lab at the Lincoln Air Force Base from 1957-1960; Terry Thomas, Bill Drummond, Neil Kenny, Raul Rehrer from the University of Miami Marine Lab and Cookie Kruglinski, editor of the University of Miami Ibis in the early 60s; friends from the Kendall, Florida Church of God during the 1960s; singers from the New Way Singers during to 70s and 80s; and former students from University of Miami, Warner Southern College, and Hope International University. (Mule from LIBCI, you know who you are; I’d really like to hear from you.) If you knew me, send me an email--wesrouse@msn.com. I will answer most emails. Positive reactions, illuminations, or elucidations are welcome; negative condemnation, censure, and attack, even though deserved, are discouraged.