We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty. Douglas Adams
These humorous words from Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy some of the very few you will read that cast doubt as a positive.
Doubt is mostly viewed as a negative trait or as even as the opposite of faith. We think this way largely because we imagine doubt and faith in still life, or rigidly defined – devoid of motion. Such attempts at crystallization lose sight of the inner dynamics and play when we struggle with doubt. When we doubt, a number of forces arise within us: curiosity, fear, urgency, to name only a few.
These forces compel us to know – to experience – and to do so we act. We move. We seek answers. We position ourselves to see with our own eyes and hear with our own ears.
Doubt drives the struggle – without it we would never see potentiality give birth to actuality. This is precisely why God does not present himself as an irrefutable fact. He wants us to struggle. He wants us to be curious and to move toward Him. He wants us to pursue him until, like the moth whose new wings are strengthened by its endeavor to escape the cocoon, we emerge transformed into a new creation that exchanges the rigidity of an earthbound life for the boundless skies.
Today we will rediscover the nature and purpose of doubt – and how to allow it to serve as a positive force for transformation.
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Heaven doth with us as we with torches do, not light them for themselves; for if our virtues did not go forth of us, ’twere all alike as if we had them not.William Shakespeare
Such words capture the essence of a latent power within us, awaiting the spark of purpose to ignite.
From our first breath, we are cradled in potential, but our world orbits around primal needs, each cry a beacon of dependence. Yet, as the veil of infancy lifts, the tender choreography of growth and guidance train us to wield the sword of power. And once trained, we are free to choose how to fulfill our potential.
The easiest path, perhaps, is to mold power to the whims of desire, where the ego eschonces itself as the unyielding center, its gravitational force gripping all it covets.
As we grow older, the spectrum of power broadens—intellectual, political, social, occupational, extending its tendrils into the vast garden of human endeavor. And with every strand of authority entwined around it, there emerges a dichotomy of choice—will we use our power be a vessel of selfish craving or a conduit of collective good?
The news often paints a grim tapestry of power misused—a teacher betraying trust, a politician trading integrity for gold, a city council weaving webs of defamation, a police badge morphing into a shroud of fear, a shepherd fleecing his flock.
Yet, amidst this gloom, rays of hope pierce through— a policewoman’s badge shining as a shield of protection and service, a school principal crafting a haven of learning and respect, a city council sowing seeds of prosperity, a politician being the voice of the voiceless, a pastor trading earthly gold for the treasure of service.
In this grand theatre, the power of choice orchestrates every act. It’s the silent custodian of all other powers, holding the potential to either plunge us into an abyss of self-indulgence or elevate us to beacons of hope amid the encroaching shadows. The path we tread in wielding this primal power echoes the essence of today’s passage—the reverence of recognizing a power beyond ourselves, an authority rooted in the heart of divine love.
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If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. C.S. Lewis
Desire is so fundamental to our nature that we often overlook its significance. Its guiding force. We are created – designed – to desire and to be satisfied.
Desire and satisfaction were part of Paradise before the fall. When God created the world and saw that it was good, he rested. When Adam and Eve worked the garden each day, they would stop in the evening and walk in the cool of the day beside the divine God of the Universe. And when they were hungry, they found satisfaction from taking the fruit of any tree in the garden.
Except one, of course.
The serpent injected venom into Eve’s desires and bent them toward the forbidden. Forget God and what He said, the serpent suggested, and become like him by eating from this tree.
Eve, having then entertained the idea of going against God’s guidance, looked at the fruit of the tree. The Scriptures say she saw three things that she desired: she saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eye, and desirable for gaining wisdom.
And so, in an attempt to satisfy those desires, she took the forbidden fruit. And ate it. And then gave some to Adam, who was standing next to her.
Adam and Eve abandoned their natural, divine provisions that would naturally meet their desires and grasped for something outside the realm of God’s desire.
And yet, though we call this event the Fall – or Paradise Lost – what we find is God’s desire only beginning to reveal itself. God came to the garden in the cool of the day to find Adam and Eve, desiring to walk with them. He called to them when he could not find them, desiring their presence. And once they confessed their sin, He covered their shame with animal skins that he sacrificed, desiring to relieve their shame. He handed down discipline and ejected them from the garden, but left them alive and well, desiring to continue to be a part of their lives. And the rest of Scripture is the story of God’s divine pursuit – his holy desire – to win us back from doing the same thing over and over again – trying to gratify our desires with anything other than Him and His provision.
God’s desire is us. And when we loosen our grip on the forbidden fruit and take our eyes off its deceptive appearances, we find that what we really desire ourselves is God. And when God’s desires and ours converge, Paradise is regained.
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The old debate between reason and revelation, reason and belief, continues up to the present day without either side suspecting that what is at issue is the activation within the being of man of an entirely new faculty of attention. Jacob Needleman
As the science vs. faith battle wages to determine who is right and what is real, what each can miss in this philosophical tournament is the opportunity to lift up their eyes and see beyond the coliseum that hosts it – and walk outside, leaving the weapons and armor of the game behind and embracing the search for being.
Science creates rules that govern and limit how we see. Faith, a term which once meant something much more, finds itself reduced by modern Western thought to nothing more than another set of rules, creeds, and systematic theology – a flattened version of what it really is.
Faith, in its essence, is not a set of rules. Faith is the confidence in what we hope for and the assurance of what we do not see. Hebrews 11:1
Faith is knowing that the deepest, truest desires within us are real. This means that our longing for love, transcendence, meaning, purpose, acceptance, and connection to the divine is not an unrealistic outlook. Faith gives us confidence that these desires are the most genuine thing about us.
And faith is the assurance that these longings, which cannot be seen with the eyes of objective consciousness, can be trusted to lead us to their fulfillment. And they can be trusted precisely because the divine, transcendent God who created us planted these inherent desires within us. He designed us with these invisible desires to seek Him so that he can fulfill them all in communion with him.
And all we have to do is to see this truth in our spirit, accepting it by faith.
Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. Hebrews 11:6
Source Scripture
Matthew 6:19-21; Luke 12:33-34
Matthew 6:22-23; Luke 11:33-36
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Extras
For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth – that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. ― Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
The meaning of life. Some say it doesn’t exist and you simply make your own way. Some say it does exist but must be understood and approached through a rigid belief system. Some say it involves achieving and conquering. Others say the meaning of life is to eat, drink, and be merry.
But some, like Victor Frankl, a Jewish survivor of the horrors of the holocaust, believe the meaning of life can only be found in love.
Today’s episode echoes Frankl’s conclusion as we review the stories from sacred Scripture that encompass our last six episodes together. Scene as a whole, they reveal the overwhelming, never-ending reckless love of the divine God of the Universe as he relentlessly pursues us. And then, we he finds us and we open ourselves to receive his divine love, he shows us how to let it flow through to everyone else.
This flow of divine love into us, through us, and out of us to others is, as we will see, the meaning of life.
The topics that we covered in the last six episodes include faith, pride, calling, holiness, selflessness, and free will. So, where did we see the love?
Let’s find out.
Source Scripture
Take a Second Look: John 4:46-54
Pride Comes Before a Fall: Luke 4:16-30
Adventure Awaits: Matthew 4:18-22; Mark 1:16-20; Luke 5:1-11
Wholly Holy: Mark 1:21-28; Luke 4:31-37
And You Give Yourself Away: Matthew 8:14-17; Mark 1:29-34; Luke 4:38-41
Pursuing Free Will: Matthew 4:23-25; Mark 1:35-39; Luke 4:42-44
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Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.
That raises a terrible question. How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with pride can say they believe in God and appear to themselves very religious? I am afraid it means they are worshiping an imaginary God. They theoretically admit themselves to be nothing in the presence of this phantom God, but are really all the time imagining how He approves of them and thinks them far better than ordinary people: that is, they pay a pennyworth of imaginary humility to Him and get out of it a pound’s worth of pride towards their fellow-men. C.S. Lewis
Well all seek worth and validation – purpose and importance. But all too often we settle for a cheapened version of these things by looking down on others. After all, if they are down there, then we are up here. And up here is where it’s at.
To look down on others, we must first convince ourselves that we are above them. And so we turn to the ego, that master of dualistic thinking, and resort to comparison.
We compare money and possessions. We compare age and appearance and reputation. We compare education and experience. We compare our family line and who we know in the community and beyond. And before realizing it, we’ve built our lives on comparison – on looking down on others. It gives us a smugness and false sense of importance so foundational to who we are that we can’t even see it.
This spurious sense of superiority we superimpose on our insecurities is called pride. It’s the first in the list of seven deadly sins. C.S. Lewis calls it the utmost evil.
It is this utmost evil called pride that we will explore today, from its subtle ability to infiltrate us unnoticed to its overwhelming power to destroy the very thing we thought it would safeguard: ourselves.
And, more importantly, we’ll discover what it takes to expose and eliminate the hidden shadow of pride that lurks within us. And as we will see, the solution to eradicating pride is a real cliff-hanger.
Source Scripture
Pride Comes Before a Fall: Luke 4:16-30
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Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
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What Jesus Read to the People of Nazareth: Isaiah 61:1
Sacred Scripture is like a Sword for the Heart: Hebrews 4:12
Sacred Scripture is Designed to Bring us Joy: John 5:39-40
Jeremiah Sees Sacred Scripture as a Feast: Jeremiah 15:16
Jesus Says Sacred Scripture Brings Joy: John 15:11
In my view, Jesus changed lives because he was able to change the way people imagined their lives. He dared them to imagine the stranger as neighbor, the child as teacher, the enemy as mirror, the deity as loving father. He helped them imagine lepers, women, and Roman centurions as exemplars of faith. He asked them to imagine that the most important person at the table was the waiter, and that the end of the line was the place to be. At the moment I cannot think of a single story he told that was not intended to change the way his listeners imagined the world. I believe the arts can do the same thing. They can break my heart, rekindle my courage, wreck my prejudice, give me second sight. Barbara Brown Taylor
The kingdom of heaven is the name Jesus chose to give to the new way of life to which he invites us to embrace. He refers to his message about the kingdom as good news or the Gospel, and he challenges us that to become part of that kingdom, it requires us to completely alter the way we think.
If you have been following us in our previous episodes, Jesus has just returned to his home country of Galilee to formally share this message of the kingdom and extend his invitation to join. And today we explore the first story that illustrates this foundational new way of thinking required to enter it. It’s called faith.
Now over the centuries, the word faith has unfortunately devolved largely into the idea of creating and adhering to a set of well-defined precepts. This unfortunate appropriation of the word faith is responsible for the denominational divide that still haunts the Christian Church. It is also responsible for keeping us out of the kingdom of God, because it offers a cheaper, easier alternative. Just agree intellectually to what is good and what is bad. Make sure your precepts validate your life and invalidate others, and sign on the dotted line.
This so-called faith does not transform. It attempts to bypass your need for transformation by printing a ticket that claims you are a lifetime member of the club.
But the kingdom is not a club, and faith is not an intellectual exercise.
Today, we will take a second look at faith in an attempt to grasp its original breadth and depth. And, when we do, we’ll begin to see just how foundational authentic faith is for experiencing true transformation and living authentically in the kingdom of heaven.
Source Scripture
Take a Second Look: John 4:46-54
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras