Receiver or Generator
The last several posts on the difference between Knowing God and living by the Knowledge of Good and Evil are designed to really help us sort out the thing that Jesus adminishes us to “seek first”. As I continue to look for ways to convey this all important distinction, it came to me.
The key question is, are we a receiver or a generator?
A receiver has no use or function without a broadcast source, and is only limited by the limitations of the broadcaster.
A generator is it’s own source, and is therefore limited to whatever it can produce.
Life connected to the tree of Life, the Living and Active Breathof God, makes us receivers.
Life by the Knowledge of Good and Evil makes us generators. We produce from our own storehouse, and interpret through our own lenses.
That’s all I’m going to say about that. Anything else would just be me trying to be a generator.
How did I know?
I pulled into the parking lot. What I saw with my eyes was the same thing I saw every day. But something was not right. I could not explain it but I could describe it. Something felt amiss, not right, out of place. A disturbance in the Force if you will. The cars were parked exactly as they should have been, the doors were locked as they should have been. But the more things appeared normal, the more the tension grew inside. What I was seeing with my eyes was not lining up with… with… what I… knew.
I opened the secure door to enter the detention facility and for the first time what I heard with my senses lined up with what I sensed with my… guts… inner man… intuition… okay, call it spirit. The noises coming down the hallway were chaotic and carried a sense of urgency. I moved quickly now to find my co-workers in a restraint situation, but it was more. The whole hallway, and both wings of locked rooms were a mess. Noise and clutter told me that this restraint was not a matter of one misbehaving resident, but a major incident involving the whole facility.
How did I know that something was going on that day at the Juvenile Detention Center? I can probably explain it better today, than I could at the time. It is this sense on which I want to elaborate. We have ways of knowing with which we must grow increasingly familiar.
My friend Alan Smith says that our ways of knowing are like contact lenses (or did I say that…? I forget) We look through them all the time but we seldom look at them. Yet it is these very lenses that either allow or disallow input into our awareness. Not only that but, different ways of knowing allow different types of input.
The way I know quantum physics is not the same way I know I am in love. The way I know about unseen danger, is different than the way I know how to make cheesecake. And the way I know God is different than the way I know good and evil.
If we try to know God in the same way we know good and evil, we are set up for multiple traps.
Knowing God takes place in our Spirit and flows into our soul and body
Knowing good and evil takes place in our soul and cannot access our spirit
Knowing God comes at His initiative and our receptivity and accesses His strength.
Knowing good and evil comes at our initiative and depends on the strength of our will.
Knowing God keeps us rightly aligned with reality and others
Knowing good and evil puts us on a comparison basis where we struggle with either pride or shame
Knowing God is like plugging into a power source outside of us
Knowing good and evil makes us the power source
We can study or even teach the same passage of scripture, even use the same outline, perhaps even use the same word choices, and have completely different impacts because of the above distinctions. God can produce effects that we cannot.
Have you ever had someone who was angry at you, utilize words that portray that they are not angry? Yet their posture, their gritted teeth, the tension of their jaw, and countless other signs tell you that their words and the energy in their soul simply do not match.
This is what happens when we try to use God’s words, but operate from the knowledge of good and evil.
Repentance is the act of shifting from knowing good and evil to knowing God. Change your lenses. You can look again at what you have seen all of your life, and it appears brand new. Change your lenses.
Or as Jesus would say, “if you will have eyes that see”. I am pretty sure He was encouraging us to Think Differently.
It’s a good thing that Cherubim was there with that sword.
The Tree of Life
When Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden, I am certain that the Garden was also kicked out of them. Life in the Garden was filled with unique attributes. Life outside… well, let’s look.
After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life. Genesis 3:24
From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” Matthew 4:17
We first must understand that all of the Old Testament was written in Hebrew. It has been translated through the generations to give us the English Bibles we have today. Translation is a tricky process, as you cannot take the translator out of the process. Translators have their own perceptions that affect the process. Kind of like human communication in every arena. Teaching in other nations, when my own interpreter does not understand the concept I am conveying, they cannot accurately convey the meanings embedded in a teaching.
Let’s look at the verse above through different eyes. Anytime our eyes view God as mean, or rigid, we must assume we are viewing Him incorrectly. I fear verses like those above could lend us to viewing God incorrectly.
First, the story. Adam and Eve have just sinned, and God has come to describe what comes next after their mess-up. They took into themselves the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This changed everything, and God began to adjust some things to go with this new circumstance. His last adjustment is described in the verse above.
He set a cherubim with a flaming sword to guard the way to the tree of life. Darn that cherubim. Stupid sword… we should be able to get to the tree of life. Shouldn’t we?
What if the english here is not an accurate picture of what God set in motion. We picture a vigilant guard, standing in protection mode to prevent access.
The “Flaming” sword does not imply flames for intimidation or destruction, rather the Hebrew word here, lahat means “enwrappping” or magic, covertness, and is sometimes translated as enchantment. The word implies then, that whatever is happening with this sword has an effect on perception. Add to this the word haphak which we translate “flashing back and forth” and is more accurately understood as changing or distorting, and we see that this cherubim is using his sword to disguise or hide the WAY through distorting or disrupting our perception.
Now, what is he guarding through this method of disguise, the tree? No, even the English says he is guarding, or distorting the way to the tree. So our mind pictures him blocking a path. But the Hebrew word is derek, which can mean a literal path, but more strongly indicates a mode of living , or a course of life. I might say a way of thinking.
Put it all together and we see that God has placed this angelic creature here with a mechanism which will confuse our perceptions, so that the way we might try to locate the Tree of life will not actually locate it. In other words, we cannot access the Tree of Life through our way of perceiving, through the knowledge of good and evil. Trying to access the Tree of Life through our knowledge of good and evil is a bit like trying to know love through quantum physics.
There is a way to get to the tree. Humans knowing good stuff and bad stuff is not that way.
Not only did we leave the Garden, but the way we perceived reality in the Garden left us. It had to.
So how do we access the Tree?
The second verse listed above is the answer to this question.
Jesus tells us, “repent, for the Kingdomof Heaven is near”.
Because we have tried to access the Tree of Life through the Knowledge of Good and Evil we read that verse like this, “Straighten up, God is coming soon.”
But the word “REPENT” is not at all what we think. This word is all about perceptions. Specifically it is about changing our mode of perceptions. Sound familiar? The word repent means “think differently”. Not just different. Differently. Change the way you take in the world around you. Becuase the Kingdom of God, the reality of His Spirit, the Source of Life… is NEAR.
You cannot access it by doing good, and avoiding bad, you must change the frequency on which you are receiving. Apparently I will have to write more about this in the days ahead…for now, begin to think differently. Could the Tree be near right now, but hidden from your eyes?
Recent Posts
- The Knowledge of Good
- What do you believe about God?
- Go to the Mattresses
- Sin Mangement Vs. Forming Jesus In Us
- Focusing on your problem or focusing on God?
- Think Again
- What does it mean to Repent? What is repentance?
- Chasing your Passion
- Stop praying for revival, and BE the revival
- Divine Power within us to ask
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