Self

Self is highly important to both God and mankind.  Self (conscious life-being) seems to be all we have that ultimately makes any difference.  It has, in its nature, a factor of freedom that is compelling, but muffled in various ways.  It requires management, and is partly given up usually for the purpose of others and for personal gain needed for sustenance.  Some of those ways are perceived as good, as in the instance of serving others.  If we are wise we accept the limitations for practical, even sacrificial, conduct.  While doing so we continue, rightly, to affirm our freedom.  We live in a number of such paradoxes and contradictions.  God wants all free persons choosing a righteous kingdom to know that he loves them and wants them to be citizens of his Kingdom.  He assures protection and nurture in his Kingdom, but sincere faith may require even ultimate sacrifice of earthly life, as the apostles demonstrated.  All citizens of his kingdom are his children to be treated with his largesse in the final denouement of his objectives with mankind on earth.  That is the biblical story and we can take it or leave it during the transition period we know as earth life.  We had an innocent womb life that transitioned into an independent earth life that can transition into a heavenly immortal life.  Our main objective in earth life is to find out how to make the final transition effective – or what appears to be the final transition.  There may be transitions beyond another.  Who knows but God?  Many persons appear disinterested in all this and prefer living life like a sophisticated animal with no personal assurance beyond natural life.  In any debate we must remember that God loves the animals too – as he noted to Jonah when Nineveh was spared.  God alerted Jonah that the reprieve of Nineveh was partly due to the children (160,000 in number according to his census) and an unnumbered mass of animals.  As is his habit, God pointed out the oddity of Jonah’s concern over the wilting of a shade plant and no thought on the part of Jonah for the children and animals – of greater worth than a fine plant wilting that Jonah fussed over because of personal inconvenience.

Scripture informs the reader that to be a Christian requires turning one’s life over to God, in the name of Jesus Christ as redeemer, in a sincere prayer of repentance.  It invites a primary limitation on human freedom for the individual.  In this negotiation the penitent is adopted (born again) into spiritual life as primary influence for thought and action.  Scripture, prayer, the Holy Spirit become sources to guide the conscience and daily experience of the individual to maturity (which is identified in righteousness).  This is all perceived as growth toward the ideal modeling of Jesus Christ and those who have successfully followed in his train.  For persons not attracted to that experience the plan seems too demanding, too limiting on their human freedom, too contrary to the interests of some natural experiences.  Even persons and institutions claiming the culture of Christians may not grasp the dynamics of the spiritual experience proposed by Jesus Christ.  That experience is referred to specifically and presented from various angles of thought, but fundamentally presented to Nicodemus in John’s Gospel, Chapter Three.  We meet Nicodemus later as one of those who claimed the body of Jesus after the crucifixion.  In all, we learn that Christianity’s primary meaning is the personal experience of it that leads even to earth’s social meaning.

The appeal of Christianity to social improvement was so attractive to early leaders of much of what we call the western world (including European cultures) that it may have overshadowed the basic personal nature of Christianity.  Even institutions, including church bodies, find Christian human culture the center of their meaning and ministry.  They lose the personal meaning except as it relates to the community and culture.  They may even become the adversaries of those who interpret Christianity first as a personal and dynamic experience made analogical to a birthing experience.  This experience is sometimes traumatic, making demands upon the natural self, and offering a discipline which is often at odds with the natural spirit of the individual.  Jesus, the God-man demonstrated that the holistic person can find earth’s good with hope (immortality) for men and women in the offering of Christ.  This is the main conflict of secular society.