Spiritual Life in the Age of Fulfillment
Last week we talked about death in the fictional family we created, the death of loved ones, death of believers and non-believers alike in this age of fulfillment. It was an important show because from it we can now finally begin to talk about life – real living, as Christians in spirit and truth. Everything up to this point was about our material approach to living as believers today in the age of fulfillment – getting married, having children, adoption, family rules – all that stuff. We covered all of that because a lot of people are looking for insights on how to actually live as Christians since Jesus returned for His own in 70AD as promised. But last week’s show took us to the topic of physical death – and so for the rest of the year we are going to be talking about spiritual life in the age of fulfillment.
I want to reiterate that Heart of the Matter is a program for seekers, for seekers of God and Christ, in spirit and truth. This show is aimed at Sons and Daughters of God who have an eternal view of existence, the long view and not simple a religious view or a material one. I applaud each and everyone of you for being willing to test all things, reasonably and by the Spirit, and for holding fast to what is good, for trying to walk by faith and love, and for LIVING. Bob Dylan wrote in a song years ago, “If you’re not being born, your dying.” Very few words from a secular artist ring more true that these when we come to living as Sons and Daughters in the age of fulfillment and I want to talk for a minute about the enemies to being born and the friends of dying, in the faith today.
Adherence to Tradition
See, if we cling to the false notion that Jesus is still coming back to take his bride (who must be pure, without spot or blemish) then we must also cling to the ideas that the apostles reiterated in the Apostolic Record – and we must cling to them. Because of this set up in the mind religions pride themselves in rigidly adhering to traditions and views never deviating from them and hold this approach up as courageous and bold. Think about it. The Mormons never change anything their founder instituted, the Catholics regale themselves in tradition, Orthodoxy even more rigidly walks about in the robes of antiquity, and Protestantism looks to the Ancient Paths like they are God himself. All of these approaches are contrary to 1. What the scripture makes plain, 2. The ways of the Spirit, and three plain old common sense when it comes to growth and maturation.
In other words, to stand on what has always been, and follow religious models set by people hundreds and even thousands of years ago, is synonymous with death – because nobody is being born into new insights, new paths and new directives of the Holy Spirit. Ironically though, as it is in the resurrection, it is the very death of things that often leads to being born, to a rising up to new life and ultimately to maturation as a daughter or son of God.
A Personal Journey
In my life this played out in a very literal way. Many of you know that I was born-again spiritually in what I call a roadside experience in the summer of 1997. God moved in and took a place by the Spirit in my heart through the finished work of Christ. Looking back this was the beginning of death for me and my traditions but it was only that – kind of like I had dug my grave but had yet to lay down in it. So, I had this experience with Jesus, but was still LDS, still dragging all that stuff around, and remained in that faith tradition for four solid years. It took four sequential events – death events – in my material life, to put me personally in the grave to all the former traditions, and to therefore launch me in to really begin living by the Spirit. During those four years as a member I was teaching Sunday school in the LDS church and learned that one of the young men in the
Reflections on Mortality
Ward was in the Hospital. A group of the young men got me to go with them during priesthood meeting to visit the kid. I offered to drive but one of the boys said he wanted to, and so I took shotgun and we drove to the hospital. The driver, named Scotty, was a big football player and really fun to be around. He played music and we all laughed all the way over and back from the hospital visit. When we got back to the church the Young Men’s president confronted me in the parking lot and chided me for taking the boys out of priesthood meeting.
The next week Scotty lost his breath on the football practice field and died. An LDS man tried to revive him by calling on the power of His holy Melchizedek priesthood. It didn’t work. He died as a teenager, he died as a Latter-Day Saint, and the world lost a fantastic young man. His passing devastated the community – and got me thinking.
The second death was that of a friend who was a long-time member of our home ward. I had known him for twenty-six years when I heard that he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer. I watched him deteriorate, lose function, and was able to kiss his forehead and say my goodbyes the day he died. His ten-year-old son was with our family (by design) the night he passed away, and this boy’s mother asked me to tell him that his dad had gone to “live with Heavenly Father.” Even though the boy knew his dad was in the last stages of life and that he would, in all probability, die sometime in the night, all he could say through sobs when I explained that he was gone was, “Already? Already?” I had to ask myself what was truly vital to this boy, to his family, and to the friend and father who had gone to the Lord. Were his doctrinal perspectives really that important or was it his faith and his love?
Personal Loss and Spiritual Reflection
The third death, which was the hardest for me to personally understand or overcome, but which further entrenched my commitment to spreading the Born-Again Mormon message of spiritual rebirth and Christian authenticity, was the unexpected passing of my older brother. My brother was blessed intellectually. He was a wise businessman, financially secure, and dedicated to his family. He had taught early morning seminary for seven or eight years and knew gospel doctrines and Church history very well. He attended church meetings without a miss, paid tithing, and was quietly one of the greatest home teachers I have ever known. But he didn’t believe the LDS history. He didn’t believe the religious con. And he was torn inside. I know this from firsthand experience. In his passing I could only see his authenticity mattering in the great beyond, and none of the trappings he went along with to get along.
The final unexpected passing was that of my father-in-law, who, unexpectedly died in his sleep. I gave him a blanket the night of his death because he said he was cold. And that was it – got a call the next day at work telling me he had passed.
Embracing Spiritual Rebirth
All of these deaths combined helped me begin to live, to fall once and for all into that grave dug at my roadside spiritual rebirth and putting the traditions behind begin really living, really being born as Dylan puts it. See that is key to the Christian walk in this day and age of fulfillment – being born, because if you’re not being born every day, rising to new life, to new levels of faith and love, if you are not morphing in your views and growing in your understanding, moving away from the fundamentals and embracing new and deeper relational levels of Him, your dying.
There are so many enemies to what Dylan called being born, (or what is really spiritual maturation) and I want to simply introduce some of the major ones now. Understand that the underlying obstacles are actually fear, shame, guilt, pride, and laziness, but all of these things are brought into play by the presence and power of the following:
Enemies to Spiritual Maturation
Of course, we all have parental influences that work on the path to spiritual growth and maturity. And in some cases, these forces, because we grew up and under them, have a great deal of sway.
Spiritual Growth and Maturation
Some parents shut anything new down that their children mention, and some parents promote anything except the one thing a child might desire, but the bottom line remains – parental influence over people is huge, and powerful for some, and until a person is willing to leave what Mom and Dad say and want, they will forever be stalled in their spiritual maturation in the Lord. As we get older most of us are not too swayed by our friends but in some cultures friends and community has a huge impact on what people believe and accept. It goes with the old saying, in order to lead the orchestra you must be willing to turn your back to the crowd. John the Baptist, Jesus and all of the Apostles did it as a means to do what they were called to do and so must all who are His. Truth is NOT the popular opinion in this world. We will never find His truth being received by most. It has NEVER worked this way. And so it gets difficult having our communities reject what we are allowing ourselves to embrace and believe – the masses just do not want to hear it. And this can be a lot of pressure, and causes some to withdraw from the path. Where falsehoods travel the path of least resistance truth faces the most.
Challenges from Lifestyle and Comfortability
For many people, as Jesus clearly points out, growing in faith and love and knowledge of him is just not attractive enough to what they desire in their lives. This has been the reality since the Nation of Israel turned on Moses in the wilderness and demanded to go back to their lives of cucumbers and leeks – and bondage. When placing comforts on the scale against the discomforts of change, which is central and essential to personal spiritual growth, comforts almost always weigh more. This can be because of laziness, indifference to eternal things, or just the love of the things of this world. But bottom line such things can easily become the enemy of Spiritual growth and maturation. When it comes to Spiritual growth this one is huge. We grow up believing that baptism by a priest is essential. Our friends in the community are all baptized by priests, and then priest says people must be baptized by priests – it takes a lot of work, courage, strength and faith to rise up against such standards and to say, “no. Not true. I don’t believe this anymore.”
The Role of Doctrines, Dogmas, and Religious Traditions
But these attitudes are essential to spiritual maturation. And here’s the deal, when resisting established doctrines and traditions it must come by and through knowledge of the scripture by the Spirit and not just rebelliousness. That is what makes it spiritual maturation. Anyone can reject the claims of a self-proclaimed prophet or pope, but to do it based on a sound understanding of the subject is what makes it an act of maturity and not immaturity. The result of this is therefore work – labor, taking the time to seek and find and test all things. We can therefore see that laziness, comforts and the like remain huge enemies to spiritual maturity. Because of upbringing and religious training, many people are afraid of rocking the boat. They assume that God would be angry with them and their seeking. This is the product of bad instruction and therefore must be seen as an obstacle and enemy to growth. God loves and desires for his creations to seek him and to test things – he wants us to come and reason with Him and there is no fear in an honest search for any truth no matter where it lies. Quite frankly, he does seem to be angered by those who are moved to inaction by fear rather than action and challenge. This is made plain in Jesus parable where a man gives ten men an amount of money and leaves the country and comes back to see what they did with it. Some made good returns on the money but one hid the amount given him because he feared losing it. This angered the Lord. Do not fear investigation, challenging the status quo, or swimming upstream, but to be mindful of going with the flow and hiding from investigation out of fear. Out of all the enemies of spiritual maturation indifference seem to be the most.
Indifference and Spiritual Growth
The reality is people just don’t care about the things of God. If you are one of them you are watching the wrong show. Many people tune in, quite frankly to be entertained – but you’ve gotta know that is not the priority here. It's to encourage you through reasonable insights and information to be sons and daughters of God, and to die to the things that hold you back from growing in your spiritual maturation. Indifference is sort of like lukewarm which does very little in life. Hot will sterilize and heat things up and cold will refresh and keep things good, but lukewarm is the cesspool for viruses.
Sons and Daughters are hot for God and Christ – this is our daily bread. Indifference is a huge enemy to such. But the hotness must be genuine, and the result of love for God and Man. It cannot be feigned, which brings us to one of the world enemies to genuine spiritual growth – religious hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy in Faith
There is no way to genuinely grow in our relationship with God and Christ if we are hypocritical in our approach to them. Hypocrisy is genuinely believing or thinking one thing and then saying or teaching something else. Solution? Truth. Say what you mean and mean what you say. Only submit to what you believe and test and challenge all the rest. Feigning belief in something will not do anyone any good who is searching for truth and who is seeking to grow. So we’ve got to get real with things.
Case in point – my view of the Trinity. Could it be correct, perhaps. Could it be partially wrong? Perhaps. Do I believe it or understand it? No. And I refuse to say I do until I do – and not before. Religious leaders want feigning from me as a means to keep things stable. Never. I will not feign. I will say what I think and mean what I say – until God shows me otherwise. If you want to know Him best, get real with him – with everything. No hypocrisy or feigning – they are enemies of the faith and of growth.
Humility vs. Pride
Sons and Daughters will humble themselves – will choose to humble themselves before the Lord. In all things. And when they fail they will humble themselves. This is the Spirit moving on and in them and they don’t refuse its leadings. The antithesis to the humble heart, which the LORD loves, is pride, hubris, arrogance. A giant enemy to spiritual maturation. Children of the living God are naturally humble because they understand, at least in part, His glory, His power, and His majesty. Before Him they remain humbled and contrite. Choose it. Choose humility in every area of your life – it is a choice.
Finally, the last enemy to spiritual maturation is arrogance/pride. It almost goes without saying because most of the things we have listed as enemies are based in self-centeredness. This is the real battle between God and humankind – our will, our ways, our selfishness, over Him. And that is the point – if a person chooses HIS ways, by the Spirit, over the ways of their parents, friends, and community, doctrine and traditions and all the rest, they will mature in their faith and understanding of Him.
We are going to continue to talk about living and maturing in the age of fulfillment as Sons and Daughters. Write your thoughts and comments below or call in tomorrow night, here on Heart of the Matter.
