The Know NO Books
02/August/2007 11:37 Filed in: Weekly Column
1 August 2007; Volume 9, Issue 24
PDF copy
A couple of weeks ago, the last installment of the Harry Potter series of books hit the book stores. From what I have read in the press in this last episode, Harry dies to be brought back to life to live happily ever after. The analogy I have read says that this makes it an OK book for all, because it is just like Aslan in the “Chronicles of Narnia” or even the resurrection of Jesus.
There is one slight problem with Harry however, Aslan dies for deep magic before the beginning of time and Jesus died for the sins of mankind, again known to the triune God, before the creation of time. Jesus was resurrected as the sign of His propitiatory sacrifice for our justification. From the little I have read about Harry, Harry died being Harry. Basically a good person in a world of the occult in which he messed around.
From personal experience and the experiences of others I have known, there is really no way to mess around with the world of the real occult and remain a basically good person, other than by a miracle of grace by the living God. Harry can do such because it is a lie for literary fiction. Like Period!
Well the Harry Potter series was the greatest - most popular series of books in history. That just goes to show how enlightened, or debased in self indulgence, western society has become, depending upon your perspective. My take however, points to the self indulgent.
This got me to thinking about what series of books could be created that would become the least popular of all time. A series that would probably never sell enough copies to cover the publishing costs, even if it were only published in ebook format. I am convinced the title for these books would be the “Know NO Books.”
Such titles as: “They Know NO Peace;” “They Know NO Rest;” “They Know NO Freedom;” would really have a message for the suffers of the Self Indulgent pandemic, but the books would be avoided like the plague. That is because each volume would describe simple steps in which self indulgence could be cured instantaneously, and treatment of the lingering chronic disfunction could be treated, slowly replacing self absorption with the man’s God created likeness.
Once we got through the first three volumes, others in the series could include: love, joy, destiny, grace. I suppose with a little work we could come up with 16 volumes to tie the “Left Behind” series of Christian literary fiction. Now all I need is an agent and a publisher.
While this is a very serious topic, to get even more serious for a moment the Self Indulgence pandemic is really just a journey into the self to try to find answers to the great questions of life, “Why am I here?” “What am I to do?” “How did this all come about?” and “What is my destiny?”
Since humanity outside God’s eternal design is totally finite in scope, the answers to such deep questions are beyond all mankind centered knowledge, including philosophy, science, and religion.
The writing is on the wall as stated in the Bible in Daniel Chapter 5 to Belshazzar the self indulgent king of Babylon. “MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. This is the interpretation of each word. MENE: God has numbered your kingdom, and finished it; TEKEL: You have been weighed in the balances, and found wanting; PERES: Your kingdom has been divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.” (Daniel 5:25b-28)
This may all come true in our day to the self indulgent, including the division of our personal Babylonian kingdom between the Medes and the Persians.
As the advanced description of this series of non selling books, let us look at one Bible verse that supports the antithesis of the Know NO paradigm for our first three volumes.
Peace
Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6,7)
The ultimate quest of humanity is to find peace with God our creator. Christianity is the only religion that truly has a definition of an active peace in which all the human personality is involved in the situation, but there is an overriding peace, foreign to the circumstance.
Once one makes peace with God, peace in the circumstances of the world begins to flow, simply because God controls the situations of this life through His grace towards this children.
Rest
Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. (Matthew 11:28,29)
Once one makes peace with God through Jesus Christ in the ultimate sense, that is the grace of God entered into by faith, you begin to understand a concept of rest that the self indulgent can not enter into, simply because as a Christian your eternal destiny has been determined for the good.
Freedom
Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
They answered Him, “We are Abraham’s descendants, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How can You say, ‘You will be made free’?”
Jesus answered them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed. (John 8:31-36)
Christ’s freedom takes two forms, one is freedom from outside powers and forces, the other is freedom from your desires to rule and control all aspects of your life.
Faith
For we walk by faith, not by sight. (2 Corinthians 5:7)
I realize that faith was not on our list, and while it is still a noun in the normal sense, it is also the operative method by which all the overcoming of our self indulgence takes place. Faith is not a force that we can use to get what we want and some teach. Faith is a gift of God and as a consequence the work of faith has attributes which we can not fully understand, nor should we try. Faith ultimately is a mystery, that frees us unto salvation, but also into the blessed journey that ultimately allows us to subdue our self indulgent tendencies for the greater understanding of God’s design for our lives.
Books are written about time space events we call life. Some books are fiction, some fiction is based upon real life, some books are about real life.
To overcome the forces, if that is a proper word, that are the root cause of our seeking to reinforce our self indulgent tendencies, the first step is to realize that we are not God, nor that we never will be God. Denying the existence of God is not enlightenment but a step back from true reality.
Following that in our journey, is the understanding that we are personally and damnably evil by our very nature and without the grace of God working in our lives we will die totally deprived of any self worth in this life or eternally.
Once we figure out that reality is more complex than we can save ourself based on our limited ingenuity, cunning, and self deception, we must look for a Messiah outside our limitedness that can provide that ultimate solution for our past, present, and future.
In the time of human history only one person Jesus Christ not only fulfills that requirement, but also claims that he alone provides that salvation gift. What we truly find objectionable about the claims of Christ however, are not so much his claims, but the fact that we can provide nothing to make us good enough to merit Divine grace. Election and salvation are a gift of God so that no man can boast.
This is where it gets complicated because freed from ourselves, what do we do with that freedom. We can walk back into the sewer from which we came, we can attempt to maintain the high ground of personal holiness, by all our skills, cunning and good works, or a host of other programs to merit what we could not achieve for ourselves. Christian churches are full of those programs and steps to peace with God, both in the salvational sense and also in the sanctification sense.
Calvinists have the concept of guilt, grace, and gratitude. Seems in most of my dealings in this context, when you start with the poor desire to understand the guilt part of the equation, by the time you get through grace to gratitude, you really can’t outwardly see the difference between gratitude and another form of religious self indulgence.
I have instead substituted the acrostic CAP. CAP stands for Condemnation, with a capital C, Adoption, with a capital A, and Praise with a capital P, but the praise also provides the Power to overcome self indulgent tendencies which still infected in our life.
Perhaps a better way to say it, is that our life becomes not what we can do in that self reliant sense we discussed last week. Rather our lives become a form of worship in which our so called personal skills and reliance are understood more as gifts than accomplishments. As such they are used with more obligation rather than pride, if that makes any sense. In other words, these gifts must be passed along at various times, places, and circumstances dictate. We understand that God controls the circumstances so then our destiny in the daily journey sense is dictated not by understanding of the situation, but through the application of God’s love, that is the ultimate form of praise.
In a Johnny Cash music tape I once had, there was a song about going to heaven. I think the title was ”Half a Mile a Day.” The concept was that we start our journey to heaven like we are on a super interstate, with a shiny red speed machine. Now I am using my creative license. Over time that desire is trained by the grace of God to slow down to not only smell the roses, as the metaphor, but also see that many times those roses are a metaphor for people, who have been so beaten down by this world, that they don’t look like a rose at all, but more like a piece of liter. Therefore, the song ended by the fact we only get to heaven a half a mile a day. In the great theological scope of things, God brings heaven to us, through our interactions, with the world, but mostly with the people of the world.
As we close this week we have this thought that time waits for no one. That is because we only understand that life is fleeting and time is passing. However, God created time in the first place and into that creation he placed man and women as gardeners. Crops grow according to the seasons and in season the harvest is produced. In the ultimate, a redeemed people are the ultimate God crop, and they demand husbandry to a high degree, not so much for this temporal purpose but more importantly for that eternal purpose of which we have really no clue.
At a slower pace, life takes on a perspective of the eternal that rushing from stoplight to stoplight cannot provide. Sometimes it would be better to leave the SUV at home and walk more. Ultimately we will cover the same ground, we will just enjoy the journey much more, because that journey is the slow path to eternal life.
PDF copy
A couple of weeks ago, the last installment of the Harry Potter series of books hit the book stores. From what I have read in the press in this last episode, Harry dies to be brought back to life to live happily ever after. The analogy I have read says that this makes it an OK book for all, because it is just like Aslan in the “Chronicles of Narnia” or even the resurrection of Jesus.
There is one slight problem with Harry however, Aslan dies for deep magic before the beginning of time and Jesus died for the sins of mankind, again known to the triune God, before the creation of time. Jesus was resurrected as the sign of His propitiatory sacrifice for our justification. From the little I have read about Harry, Harry died being Harry. Basically a good person in a world of the occult in which he messed around.
From personal experience and the experiences of others I have known, there is really no way to mess around with the world of the real occult and remain a basically good person, other than by a miracle of grace by the living God. Harry can do such because it is a lie for literary fiction. Like Period!
Well the Harry Potter series was the greatest - most popular series of books in history. That just goes to show how enlightened, or debased in self indulgence, western society has become, depending upon your perspective. My take however, points to the self indulgent.
This got me to thinking about what series of books could be created that would become the least popular of all time. A series that would probably never sell enough copies to cover the publishing costs, even if it were only published in ebook format. I am convinced the title for these books would be the “Know NO Books.”
Such titles as: “They Know NO Peace;” “They Know NO Rest;” “They Know NO Freedom;” would really have a message for the suffers of the Self Indulgent pandemic, but the books would be avoided like the plague. That is because each volume would describe simple steps in which self indulgence could be cured instantaneously, and treatment of the lingering chronic disfunction could be treated, slowly replacing self absorption with the man’s God created likeness.
Once we got through the first three volumes, others in the series could include: love, joy, destiny, grace. I suppose with a little work we could come up with 16 volumes to tie the “Left Behind” series of Christian literary fiction. Now all I need is an agent and a publisher.
While this is a very serious topic, to get even more serious for a moment the Self Indulgence pandemic is really just a journey into the self to try to find answers to the great questions of life, “Why am I here?” “What am I to do?” “How did this all come about?” and “What is my destiny?”
Since humanity outside God’s eternal design is totally finite in scope, the answers to such deep questions are beyond all mankind centered knowledge, including philosophy, science, and religion.
The writing is on the wall as stated in the Bible in Daniel Chapter 5 to Belshazzar the self indulgent king of Babylon. “MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. This is the interpretation of each word. MENE: God has numbered your kingdom, and finished it; TEKEL: You have been weighed in the balances, and found wanting; PERES: Your kingdom has been divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.” (Daniel 5:25b-28)
This may all come true in our day to the self indulgent, including the division of our personal Babylonian kingdom between the Medes and the Persians.
As the advanced description of this series of non selling books, let us look at one Bible verse that supports the antithesis of the Know NO paradigm for our first three volumes.
Peace
Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6,7)
The ultimate quest of humanity is to find peace with God our creator. Christianity is the only religion that truly has a definition of an active peace in which all the human personality is involved in the situation, but there is an overriding peace, foreign to the circumstance.
Once one makes peace with God, peace in the circumstances of the world begins to flow, simply because God controls the situations of this life through His grace towards this children.
Rest
Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. (Matthew 11:28,29)
Once one makes peace with God through Jesus Christ in the ultimate sense, that is the grace of God entered into by faith, you begin to understand a concept of rest that the self indulgent can not enter into, simply because as a Christian your eternal destiny has been determined for the good.
Freedom
Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
They answered Him, “We are Abraham’s descendants, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How can You say, ‘You will be made free’?”
Jesus answered them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed. (John 8:31-36)
Christ’s freedom takes two forms, one is freedom from outside powers and forces, the other is freedom from your desires to rule and control all aspects of your life.
Faith
For we walk by faith, not by sight. (2 Corinthians 5:7)
I realize that faith was not on our list, and while it is still a noun in the normal sense, it is also the operative method by which all the overcoming of our self indulgence takes place. Faith is not a force that we can use to get what we want and some teach. Faith is a gift of God and as a consequence the work of faith has attributes which we can not fully understand, nor should we try. Faith ultimately is a mystery, that frees us unto salvation, but also into the blessed journey that ultimately allows us to subdue our self indulgent tendencies for the greater understanding of God’s design for our lives.
Books are written about time space events we call life. Some books are fiction, some fiction is based upon real life, some books are about real life.
To overcome the forces, if that is a proper word, that are the root cause of our seeking to reinforce our self indulgent tendencies, the first step is to realize that we are not God, nor that we never will be God. Denying the existence of God is not enlightenment but a step back from true reality.
Following that in our journey, is the understanding that we are personally and damnably evil by our very nature and without the grace of God working in our lives we will die totally deprived of any self worth in this life or eternally.
Once we figure out that reality is more complex than we can save ourself based on our limited ingenuity, cunning, and self deception, we must look for a Messiah outside our limitedness that can provide that ultimate solution for our past, present, and future.
In the time of human history only one person Jesus Christ not only fulfills that requirement, but also claims that he alone provides that salvation gift. What we truly find objectionable about the claims of Christ however, are not so much his claims, but the fact that we can provide nothing to make us good enough to merit Divine grace. Election and salvation are a gift of God so that no man can boast.
This is where it gets complicated because freed from ourselves, what do we do with that freedom. We can walk back into the sewer from which we came, we can attempt to maintain the high ground of personal holiness, by all our skills, cunning and good works, or a host of other programs to merit what we could not achieve for ourselves. Christian churches are full of those programs and steps to peace with God, both in the salvational sense and also in the sanctification sense.
Calvinists have the concept of guilt, grace, and gratitude. Seems in most of my dealings in this context, when you start with the poor desire to understand the guilt part of the equation, by the time you get through grace to gratitude, you really can’t outwardly see the difference between gratitude and another form of religious self indulgence.
I have instead substituted the acrostic CAP. CAP stands for Condemnation, with a capital C, Adoption, with a capital A, and Praise with a capital P, but the praise also provides the Power to overcome self indulgent tendencies which still infected in our life.
Perhaps a better way to say it, is that our life becomes not what we can do in that self reliant sense we discussed last week. Rather our lives become a form of worship in which our so called personal skills and reliance are understood more as gifts than accomplishments. As such they are used with more obligation rather than pride, if that makes any sense. In other words, these gifts must be passed along at various times, places, and circumstances dictate. We understand that God controls the circumstances so then our destiny in the daily journey sense is dictated not by understanding of the situation, but through the application of God’s love, that is the ultimate form of praise.
In a Johnny Cash music tape I once had, there was a song about going to heaven. I think the title was ”Half a Mile a Day.” The concept was that we start our journey to heaven like we are on a super interstate, with a shiny red speed machine. Now I am using my creative license. Over time that desire is trained by the grace of God to slow down to not only smell the roses, as the metaphor, but also see that many times those roses are a metaphor for people, who have been so beaten down by this world, that they don’t look like a rose at all, but more like a piece of liter. Therefore, the song ended by the fact we only get to heaven a half a mile a day. In the great theological scope of things, God brings heaven to us, through our interactions, with the world, but mostly with the people of the world.
As we close this week we have this thought that time waits for no one. That is because we only understand that life is fleeting and time is passing. However, God created time in the first place and into that creation he placed man and women as gardeners. Crops grow according to the seasons and in season the harvest is produced. In the ultimate, a redeemed people are the ultimate God crop, and they demand husbandry to a high degree, not so much for this temporal purpose but more importantly for that eternal purpose of which we have really no clue.
At a slower pace, life takes on a perspective of the eternal that rushing from stoplight to stoplight cannot provide. Sometimes it would be better to leave the SUV at home and walk more. Ultimately we will cover the same ground, we will just enjoy the journey much more, because that journey is the slow path to eternal life.