Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. -- Romans 12:2
As humans, we alone appear to have a choice in how we
live. My cats, my dog, the deer that
shred my trees, the fish in the pond, none of these creatures can see beyond
itself. The animal recognizes threats,
responds to kindness, seeks a secure environment to feed, rest, and reproduce
with little choice, for it is driven mostly by instincts. Animals, at least those that are by nature
predators, seem to be capable of reasoning in the sense of being able to solve
a concrete puzzle that lies in front of them and working together to bring down
prey. Most animals can be trained to do
rather complex things, but it is at the direction of a higher human mind
guiding and channeling their instincts.
As my father said with regard to training a stock dog, “First, you have
to be smarter than the dog.”
Though my choices in life and where I have ended up are very
much founded in the time and place and circumstances of my childhood, I do not
believe I was bound by my past to do the things I have done. If I was constrained by anything I would say
it was more a vision of my future that drew rather than the past that drove
me. Many years ago, I deliberately set
down on paper the kind of place and situation in which I wanted to live, and that
is where I am. I don’t mean to imply
that I consciously took the exercise very seriously because I did not. I had just read or heard of the idea and did
it. Regardless of how my conscious mind
saw it, it apparently gave my natural life a direction. The path here was halting and meandering,
even tortuous. This is not heaven. It is less than idyllic. It has disadvantages and troubles, and I
sometimes ask myself what I am doing here, but it is what I pictured – what I
asked for right down to some very specific aspects.
If you stop and think about that for a moment, that is kind
of scary. Time, though, makes a lot more
sense to me if I think of it, not as something going past me, but as a
dimension in which I move just as I do in space. If we
don’t know where we are going in space, we are fairly unlikely to get
there. Maybe the same is true for
time.
And then there is eternity, a different attractor -- as Bob
would say -- altogether. Life might be a
little like electricity. If you have the
right ground, electricity can flow the right way and do something
positive. If you let it find its own
ground, it can be extremely destructive.
That’s what I like about Jesus.
Therefore it says, “When
he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.” (In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean
but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended
far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.) (Ephesians
4:8-10)
He is the Alpha and Omega, Generator and Ground. We come from Him and go to Him, and we are
transformed in the process, becoming like Him and part of Him -- because He
knows the end from the beginning.
And he gave the
apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip the
saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we
all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to
mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so
that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried
about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.
Rather, speaking the truth in love, we
are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom
the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is
equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it
builds itself up in love. (Ephesians
4:11-16)
