Perception Is Everything

I have been thinking over some things lately - things theological and doctrinal.  I am a pastors kid and been in church my entire life.  With that, there is a certain "understanding" of things theological.  Regardless of doctrinal bent, ie Reformed, Calvinistic, Armenian, Charismatic, etc, there are certain elements that cross all the lines and blend together.  Issues like heaven, hell, salvation, grace and faith fall into this category.

The problem is, I have been rethinking these things.  NOT discounting them, not trying to erase them or change them because that is the thing to do, but because I have questions.  As I continue to read the Scriptures and grow in my personal relationship with the Godhead, many of the things we "know" to be true, don't seem to line up quite right.  Again, I am not trying to discount them or "throw them under the bus", I love my heritage and am ever so thankful for it.  But my quest is not for conformity or even heritage, but for truth...in love.

One of the things I notice is that people read the Bible differently, with a certain lens, and how they read it and thus understand it, affect how they view God and other people.  Everybody approaches the Bible or the Christian faith with a bias, a personal set of things that lend to our personal interpretation of the Bible and thus the Godhead.

This topic is so vast that it will take days to scratch the surface...that is what will be coming in the days ahead here.  In the meantime, I want to start by sharing an excerpt from a book by C. Baxter Kruger that leans heavily on the beloved "Chronicles of Narnia" series by C.S. Lewis.  Ultimately it is about perception.

You see perception is everything.  How you perceive God, the Bible, faith, et all, will impact your very life and existence.  One such topic that is perceived differently today is that of inclusion.  We will talk more about this in the days ahead, but this excerpt I think will provide a great starting point for us when it comes to the Father heart of God and the all inclusive love act of the Godhead through the once and for all sacrifice of Jesus Christ (which by the way, Scripture indicates actually happened in the heart of the Godhead before the foundation of the world, only culminating physically 2000 years ago).

The following is from the book "The Secret" by C. Baxter Kruger: 

Imagine an eight-year-old kid at the fair.  There he is, in the midst of everything a kid dreams about.  Exciting rides, caramel apples and cotton candy, games and prizes--all are within his reach.  And he is taking full advantage of the moment.  But suddenly he realizes that he has been separated from his parents.  He is lost.  Sheer terror seizes his little soul.  In a split second he moves from having the time of his life to being so panic-stricken that he no longer even knows there is a fair.  His freedom to see and enjoy the good and wonderful things that are all around him has

vanished into thin air. 

What this story is telling us is that what happens to our insides shapes the way we experience what is outside of us.  Our insides can be so shredded we lose sight of the great and awesome things that are all around us.  We no longer see them as great and awesome.  And when that happens, we lose our freedom to enjoy them. 

I think the kid at the fair is a parable of human life, it is a picture of what is 

happening to us, of why our joy and contentment are so fleeting, of why life can be so painful and meaningless.  Again and again we encounter something that overwhelms our insides.  It may well be that we do not even know it.  The internal shredding, so to speak, may not even reach the level of our conscious feelings, much less the intensity of feelings that we see in the kid at the fair.  But the shredding is happening, and the effect is the same.  The bewilderment inside short-circuits our capacity to behold the glory of life around us and thus shuts down our freedom to live in it.  And we don’t live in it.  Our living becomes as empty as the laughter of 

the lady who did not get the punch line of the joke.   

It is not that the glory goes away.  It is just that we can no longer see it.  We 

look right into the smile of a little girl and see nothing.  There she stands, a sheer miracle, the living embodiment of beauty, and she is smiling at  us, eager to share life.  But we look right through her, smile and all.  We do the same with other people, with flowers, with music, with work, and baseball.  Their wonder and glory just don’t register with us.  They appear pale to us, mundane, even boring and meaningless.  I don’t think that we are consciously aware of what is happening.   

Rarely do we tell ourselves that this person or that flower is boring.  We just don’t see them for what they are, and as a result, their presence does not touch us or mean anything to us.  Before we know it we have flown through a week--maybe even months and years--with our eyes glazed over.  We may be alive, but we have missed out on living life. For we cannot relate to, much less enjoy, what we cannot see.   

Let me relate a story to you that illustrates what this kind of blindness does to us.  It comes from C. S. Lewis’ splendid tale, The Chronicles of Narnia.

is of a beautiful land on a clear day.  The whole earth is full of glory, alive with a radiance that only our best, most glorious days can hint at.  It is Narnia, the promised and longed-for land.  Several of the heroes of the story are walking around with increasing awe and irrepressible joy, never having even imagined anything so beautiful, so intensely alive, so real, so good.       

But also present is a bitter little band of scowling Dwarfs.  They are not 

exploring.  There is no light of wonder in their eyes.  They have no joy.  They are, in fact, huddled in a tight circle on the ground.  Far from knowing themselves to be in a beautiful land on a clear day, they believe they are trapped in a “pitch-black, poky, smelly little hole of a stable.”

Lucy, one of the heroes of the story, shouts to the Dwarfs:  “But it isn’t dark, 

you poor stupid Dwarfs.  Can’t you see?  Look up!  Look round!   Can’t you see the sky and the trees and the flowers?  Can’t you see me?”

One of the scowling Dwarfs, named Diggle, blurts out in exasperation: “How in the name of all Humbug can I see what ain’t there?  And how can I see you any more than you can see me in this pitch darkness?” 

Instantly a bolt of grief shoots through Lucy’s heart.  Then an idea comes to her.  She snatches up some wild violets and shoves them toward Diggle.  “Listen, Dwarf,” she says,  “even if your eyes are wrong, perhaps your nose is all right: can you smell that?” 

Smell he can, but far from smelling fresh violets, Diggle smells stable-litter, 

and is so deeply offended he takes a swipe at her.   At this point, the great lion Aslan appears.  Aslan is the supreme hero of the story and the one responsible for the existence and the glory of Narnia.  Lucy, in her 

bewildered grief over the blind Dwarfs, immediately implores Aslan to do something to help them.  What follows is fascinating: 

Aslan raised his head and shook his mane.  Instantly a glorious feast 

appeared on the Dwarfs’ knees: pies and tongues and pigeons and 

trifles and ices, and each Dwarf had a goblet of good wine in his right 

hand.  But it wasn’t much use. They began eating and drinking 

greedily enough, but it was clear that they couldn’t taste it properly.  

They thought they were eating and drinking only the sort of things 

you might find in a Stable.  One said he was trying to eat hay and 

another said he had got a bit of an old turnip and a third said he’d 

found a raw cabbage leaf.  And they raised golden goblets of rich red 

wine to their lips and said “Ugh!  Fancy drinking dirty water out of a 

trough that a donkey’s been at!  Never thought we’d come to this”.

This is a truly tragic situation.  The Dwarfs sit in the open on a splendid 

cloudless day.  Before them is a luscious feast called forth by the King (admittedly you would have to be British to think of this as a feast, but use your imagination).  They have the golden goblets in their hands.  But, as Lucy said, their eyes are all wrong, and so is everything else, dreadfully so.  They actually drink the rich red wine of the promised land and taste only dirty water from a donkey’s trough!    

Note carefully that the problem is not that the Dwarfs have been excluded from the glory of Narnia.  They are every bit as much in Narnia as are the heroes.  In fact, it would be impossible for the Dwarfs to be any closer to Narnia than they already are.  But their eyes are wrong.

And the absence of proper seeing leaves them incapable of experiencing Narnia as  Narnia.  Like the kid at the fair, the Dwarfs’ blindness robs them of the joy of Narnia and thus leaves them scowling and bitter. 

This is what happens to us.  It is not that we are excluded from Narnia, so to speak.  The feast is ours.  We daily dine on the bounty of the King’s royal food and raise his golden goblets of rich red wine.  But something rather like an optical illusion keeps happening and we do not see properly.  We do not see who we really are, where we are, and with what glory we are involved. And this optical illusion, this absence of light, this absence of proper seeing, destroys our ability to experience the feast as a feast, the fair as a fair, life as life.  Without seeing the glory we have no freedom to live in it.  And life inevitably becomes a joyless, boring, meaningless 

routine--sometimes, even dreadful.

What a beautiful description.  Its not that we are not already in, its just that we have not recognized it yet.

It is my sincerest desire that we come to recognize more and more how fully the love of God is for us all.

Cheers!