You are currently browsing the Bruce Smith weblog archives for the day 29. August 2010.
29. August 2010 by BruceSmith.
Dream State: embracing God’s fantastic adventure for your life
Our world is under the spell of a broken dream, a distorted reality. Somehow, someone, has snuck into our minds and hearts, and implanted an idea which has gone viral and now eats away at our very souls. As the movie, Inception, suggests, an idea, once fully formed, has stunning power. That idea, false or true, can set “realities” in place which dictate how one’s life is lived.
In our present world we are told that all we see, feel, desire is real…sex, money, anger, revenge, violence, unending pleasure, …these are the things which will fill the void, we are taught. “This is what we all need more of!” “This is the way to happiness!” Everywhere we turn we are encouraged to taste, feel, embrace, take in, all and any thing our inner drives point out to us.
Thousands of images are implanted into our minds daily through, song, video, dvd, rumor mills, soaps, billboards, packaging, t-shirts, and everywhere else we turn. Live the dream! Stay in the dream! This is what’s real! The clear message is, you can escape all the pain living in this dream, only the weak feel the difficulties of life. So, the refrain goes. This distortion of reality, sadly, has invaded the halls of our churches today as well. Sermon after sermon, and book after book is written telling us that as God’s “blessed” people, its all good all the time, and anything else is a lie or outside of God’s plan. Such a view, ignores the realities of life in the real world, and worse, is a complete contradiction of the words of Jesus who said, “In this life you will have hardship”. Called to make the “hard” decision of going counter-cultural, we have come to believe, if its fun, its all good, relax, don’t be so uptight, don’t over-think everything, lighten up. We abdicate joyful and committed purposeful living for the inept promise of a “good time”. We are, indeed, called to enjoy life, called by God Himself to live life to the full, but the world’s roadmap to fun looks dramatically different from His.
This is, of course, nothing new. This false reality is the one first pitched “in the beginning”, or shortly thereafter, in the garden. It was there that Eve dove headfirst into the original deadly dream. Believing that she had the right to build her own life, her own reality, she took the bait, and in doing so, led Adam to follow along with her. Together, they set the stage, and built the architecture, for a world that has remained under the ether far too long. Ever since, human beings have sought meaning and fulfillment in the wrong things, and have tried to avoid the realities of a broken world.
Malcolm Muggeridge, in dealing with the reality of this lie suggested that the deceiver, and false dream casters, call out to us and “goad us to believe a lie when we see with and not through the eye”. Because of the intoxicating nature of the dream’s false promises we are tempted to believe that the hot little thing in the daisy dukes and tight shirt is worth our pursuit, no guidelines attached. We are told the payoff is worth the compromising of our integrity. We are assured that the title on the door is of ultimate significance, and so, we sacrifice our families and the lives of any who would get in our way. We are told that fame, for fame sake and all its perks, is worth anything we must give up to obtain it; our logic, our families, our health, our minds, our souls…to be famous, in the present cultural atmosphere, is salvation. The adulation of lazy minds and thoughtless souls, somehow, has become the Holy Grail, the new American Dream.
Like the Satan figure in Milton’s Paradise Lost, we come to view the marvelous gifts and promises of God as an affront to our own independence, and so we sacrifice our souls on the altar of self-worship. All that is good, we turn our backs on, and that which is bad we redefine as fantastic. In pursuit of that fantasy we bury ourselves forever. Decision by decision, we continue to dig our own emotional, relational, physical, and spiritual graves.
We must wake up, and quick, as individuals, as a culture, and as a global community. As we go deeper, as we remain asleep in the lies sold to us, our distortion grows, the trap snares us further, our burial in guilt is deeper, the shame overtakes us, and the emptiness grows.
The longer we remain in our addiction to escapism, the more grave the explosive reality and the carnage of our lives becomes. Either we shake ourselves from this nightmare or else we shall die in a broken dream and face an eternity of increasing madness and darkness of soul.
Shockingly, even as our worlds cave in around us, and the pain and destruction is undeniable, we seem unwilling to let go of the patterns, psychosis, and pathologies of the past which imprison us. A broken relationship with a parent, a dream of a happy marriage betrayed, a broken professional dream, an unfulfilled longing…in our unwillingness to own our part, amidst our fear to face our own failure and guilt, and to place it before God, our denial of reality locks us into a downward spiral….lower and lower we go until we forgot what truth and goodness look like. We, like Adam and Eve, buy into the lie that’s its easier to hide than to look the truth in the face and deal with it. We forget the message of grace and embrace the fantasy of self-preservation. Asleep to the reality that we cannot control our lives, we slumber in our self-trickery, and ignore what everyone else around us sees so clearly.
There is good news. There is an escape. We can be brought out of this state of madness. Our only way out is to find balance again. We must have something sure, a totem, a monument of truth, something worthy of our affection. We need a frame of reference for true reality in a world drugged by the deceptive fantasy of falsehood. Only the CROSS OF CHRIST serves as that place of balance and stability. The historical reality of the Christ event is the one sure thing which points the way to sanity in a world smothering under a cloak of deadly illusion.
Chesterton has suggested, “Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.” The key to our coming back to reality and living the fantastic adventure God has for us is to see the world as it is. We must see what is around us through the eyes of God rather than with the lens of desire. The majority cultural opinion will always lead you away from the call of God for your life. As the scriptures tell us, “Wide is the road that leads you away from God and toward destruction. Many will take that road to death. Narrow is the road that leads you to God and the plan He has for you, and few will travel on that road.”
If we are to live a life big enough to inspire our hearts in a world gone mad with an endless thirst for the cries and passions of those who cannot see, we must allow our hearts to be captured by the life-giving truth of the biblical story. When we sit before the God-inspired stories within its pages, it is there we find our balance. The word of God gives us this vivid promise, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived, the things God has prepared for those who love Him.” Now that’s a dream state to crave!
In place of the craving for some Freudian compulsion to be loved by those who never can love you properly, God offers you His perfect love. In place of the unquenchable longing to be touched by another, any other, God extends the compassionate and pure touch of His hand, a hand and quality of affection which will only protect and nurture you. No other love can handle your heart in reality. In place of the overwhelming weight of guilt and the crushing blow of failure, God offers you forgiveness AND newness. In place of a thought-life controlled by shame inducing desires, God extends to you the promise of the ongoing transformation of your mind in Christlikeness. In place of a rabid sense of reactive rage and destructive insecurity, God offers you a heart of tenderness and understanding, even compassion, towards those who know not how to treat you. In place of spiritual immaturity and distortion, He offers ongoing growth, depth, and clarity. In place of your bitterness and thirst for revenge toward those who have pained you deeply, God grants you the peace of mind, and rest of spirit, that only comes from outside yourself. As the scriptures say, “God keeps them in perfect peace whose minds are continually focused on Him”. In place of confusion and self-pity amidst your unfulfilled desires, God offers you the superior knowledge that His ways are not our ways, and that He is able and willing to redeem all things in your life. He reminds us that nothing happens outside of the gaze of God, and that He regularly transforms tragedy into triumph in the lives of His kids. He whispers the assurance given to Jeremiah, “I have plans for you, plans not to harm you, plans for your good, plans for a hope and a future.” And in place of a search for life in the shallow waters of cultural pursuits, shallow waters that will eventually drown you, God offers you a life-long swim in the ocean of lasting fulfillment, purpose, and heart enlarging adventure. He is the vacation for the soul we all desire. He is The Dream and the Dream Giver. He is the source and the ultimate destination for all true and lasting dreams.
Embrace the Dream State God offers you today. Remember His promise, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived, …all that God has planned for you in Christ Jesus”. That state of mind, soul, and spirit, cannot be shaken. The world may attempt to deceive us, the walls make shake a bit, and the enemy may shoot his daggers our way seeking to apply his plan of inception. But we are assured by God, the onslaught of the enemy, and all the attacks of hell itself, cannot, will not, prevail. He is for us, it matters not who may be against us. Let’s get after His adventure.
Bruce Smith
optimuslife.org
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