Knowledge not given by God is not true Knowledge. Sight not lit by God’s light, is not true seeing. Joy not sanctified, released by God, is not true joy. We can access dimensions that we were not made to access. We can run off cliffs that were supposed to be fenced off. We brought the fences down on the cliffs, so now we can’t run free, or we might run too far… When the fences were there, we could run crazy free, joyous, impossible to run too far or run into danger. But we wanted more. We wanted power. We wanted to ‘be like God’ and so we chose sin. (Gen 3:5a) We wanted more knowledge, to see beyond the bounds of goodness and freedom; we wanted to ‘know’ not just ‘goodness’, but ‘evil’ also, so we chose sin. (Gen 3:5b) Here the walls came down. Untrue knowledge, ‘evil’, or what James calls ‘demonic wisdom’ (James 3:15) flooded our field of goodness, our landscape of the pure. The pure waters of Eden were contaminated with dark, bitter waters. We opened our minds to darkness, and darkness and flooded in. What does that mean for us now? Well, it means that we might see, understand, question, reason… with knowledge, with vision, with motives, that are not all pure, not all meaningful, not all good. We are no longer walled into Eden, and can trust all the parameters of reality. No, we have to decipher now. We have to discern. We have to ‘keep with repentance’ (Mt 3:8), we have to ‘strive to rest’ (Heb 4:11), we have to discard learning (Phil 3:8), we have to wade back upstream to childlike states of being. (Mt 18:3) The real key is taking captive thoughts, and making them subject to Christ. (2 Cor 10:5) Truth is a battle now, does not come naturally. It comes through faith, and it stays true by ‘holding’ to Christ. (John 8:31-32) In faith and ‘truth’, it is as if we are walking on the peak of mountain range – high and beautiful, but dangerous and vulnerable. God calls us to have no fear as we walk this peak, but he does call us to ‘balance’ and secure our steps, by keeping our eyes on him, carrying the cross as we walk. (Luke 9:23)
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AuthorPeter Walker. I hope you enjoy these reflections. Please feel free to comment!:) Archives
February 2024
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