Many people have been "looking for" the truth for years,
going from one church to another, reading all possible religious and
philosophical literature, and still can not get to a cognition of what
the truth is. As if a Truth with capital T does not exist, as if does
not exist God Who wants to reveal the truth personally to them, and as
if the truth itself is not understandable. Obviously the problem is not
in Truth, God and understandability of the truth, but in themselves!
What is their essential problem?
They do not allow the Truth to speak itself about itself, but
they set conditions to it!
They claim that they ask God in prayer what is the truth, but they
actually ask themselves, their hearts. They have raised the voice
of their selfish and self-righteous Me so high that are not able
to hear God's voice at all. The voice of their personal doubts and
assumptions, of selfish and self-righteous desires, is so strong that
because of it they can not hear at all the answer to the question:
"What is the truth really?" They have made themselves, their
"I think ..." and their ways more important than the truth
and God Who is revealed by the truth.
Man's unreadiness to listen to other people's advice often
points to his unreadiness to hear the advice and voice of divine
inspiration. If we, in our arrogance, have to condition our
acceptance of certain opinion by whether our great Me also agrees
with it, then we limit our power to cognate those character attributes
which are not contained in our nature, but are necessary for us to be
obtained.
A friend of mine took the Gospel with a great zeal, and then stated after a couple
of days:
"I don't like it! Jesus is very arrogant! He always repeats: I am
this and I am that! He is just performing miracles and putting on airs!"
What is the problem of my friend?
He has not read the Bible in a spirit of humility!
It has resulted in his asking his own Me, not God Himself,
what is the truth.
And why is it bad?
His sinful nature is not able to understand the real unselfish goodness,
presented to him through studying the Bible. But, as his nature itself is
proud and arrogant, it gave its own comment on the Bible on the basis of
the principles it is driven by. My friend saw pride and arrogance in the
Bible because he himself would be good only out of such motives.
One acquaintance of mine has a similar problem in her approach to the
Bible. She said to me that Eastern religion fit much more to her heart,
whereas she cannot understand the Bible at all. I said to her:
"If we are trying to understand, feel and experience Holy Scriptures through ourselves, asking our heart, our nature, then we will not understand their true sense, for the Holy Scriptures are given to us in order that we understand something new through them, something we have not in ourselves, in our nature, in our heart, which we should have. Holy Scriptures were not given by man, but by God. They must not reduce themselves to a level of the human in order to be understandable, but their aim is to el
evate man to God and His character."
Again, another friend of mine told me that the Bible itself looks to him
quite rational, but therefore too much cold, differently from some ready
interpretations of the Bible of the Christian community he belonged to.
I told him:
"The problem is not in the Bible, but in you. Its revelation is not
cold, but so are our hearts. Instead of provoking the fanaticism of our
hearts by reading some distorted spiritual literature, we should
humiliate ourselves and admit that, upon a rational revelation of
the Bible, our heart has not love. Then we should stick to Christ's
righteousness, and not to search through ourselves, looking for a
goodness we will never find. The Bible is a test of the character
of our heart, but our sinful and sel
f-righteous heart cannot be a test for the Bible!"
A similar arrogance is noticeable also with those who consider themselves
to be faithful and correct Christians. Sometimes, in some special situation
they reveal that they actually do not believe God, but themselves. Faced
with their life responsibility, they are prone to claim:
"I have not will to do that work!
I don't feel like working ... I like
most this, and least that! I would like most ..."
Let us notice that those persons ask their Me for permission for any
thing, whether their Me can or cannot, whether it wants or not to do
the task standing before them. Although those persons claim that they
believe in God, they do not ask God what His will is, but ask themselves.
Saying that they have not a will to do what they should, they
show that they are looking for a strength of will in themselves,
not in God. They condition a faith in God by the faith in their
wishes and abilities. In doing so they limit themselves
automatically by their selfish motives, lack of love to do this
or that, and also even by a lack of money or abilities which
would be given to them as a gift should they rely upon God, not
upon themselves. They claim to be trusting in God, but show by
their actions that they have not trust at all that God loves them, and that
He will give them, because of His love toward them, the needed
power of unselfish love and abilities to complete the task they
are called to by God's providence. Such persons show by their
deeds also that they disbelieve God that it is better to act
according to His law, but that it is better for them to walk
their own ways. In their arrogance, those persons show in such
way that they doubt that their Creator knows better what is the best for
them. And when such persons experience hard life troubles, then
they grudge to God for He has permitted those troubles, as if God
should have forced them against their free will to renounce the
way of life they have chosen themselves.
Many understand not until the time of troubles how much they relied upon
themselves instead upon God, but thus the troubles are just an opportunity
for them to humiliate before God, hear His voice and accept His wise leading
and patronage.
Many are waiting that certain situation or inspiration throws
them to God's arms; however, the natural course of things always
tends to separate us from God.
We ourselves have to humiliate ourselves and choose God, because
we want it with our will, not because our nature wishes so, for
our sinful nature does not stand God. It is precisely why man is
given the free will to make decisions independently of his nature,
in order that he be free from himself.
Precisely in order that we know how to use free will, to
know to distinguish the motives of our Me from God's
inspiration, we are offered a wisdom. And when our Me
begins to rebel against the voice of reason, how many
of us are willing to subjugate the voice of their Me
to the voice of the Truth?! While a majority tests the
voice of the Truth asking their Me for opinion and approval,
few men agree to humiliate themselves, to admit their weakness
and helplessness and to obey to the divine truth and its power.
Do we start from our Me or from God, do we start from our biases
and prejudices or from what the truth really is?
It can be seen while studying Holy Scripture:
Do we try to recognize ourselves
at any price as those who allegedly
fulfil his justice by their lives, or
we admit to be in a conflict with God's
law and therefore need God's mercy in order
to have stand before God's face?
The Pharisees who, in spite of their strict morality, sent Jesus
to the cross, did not read the Bible in order to rejoice in God's
goodness, but to rejoice in their own. They made efforts to enable
their Me to be obedient to the law, instead of renouncing their
sinful Me through the law and relying upon God. They actually
endeavored to understand the demands of the law through
themselves and their sinful nature, and it was why they
had interwoven the motives of their sinful nature into
their observance of the law.
What happens when we try to understand through us, our nature and
our feelings the revelation of God's character, expressed through His law?
WE ARE TRYING AT ANY PRICE TO RECOGNIZE OURSELVES AMONG THOSE WHO FULFIL THE LAW
In that case there are two possibilities (both wrong!):
1) The first possibility:
We fail to experience the law by our sinful nature, and therefore we
discard it.
Then we say:
"NO! I don't feel it as a truth! I don't like it!"
2) The second possibility:
We succeed to understand, feel and experience God's law by our
sinful nature and self-righteous conscience, that meaning our
misunderstanding of the law, and so we fall into fanaticism, legalism etc.
Those two possibilities are a consequence of our relying upon ourselves. We have
put our Me on a throne of our heart and life and are asking it for opinion. We
think that all, and even God Himself, exists for the sake of our Me, so that it meets our demands.
Then we do not start from the question of whether the revelation is true,
but of whether it meets our own motives, habits and already formed opinions.
We are too arrogant to permit God to speak to us, and so we speak to
Him what we would like to be the truth. We are trying to find ourselves
in an accord with the law, instead of admitting we are under it, i.e.
that we are in a conflict with the law.
What happens when we accept the revelation of God's law humbly,
admitting that we are not in an accord with the law, but in a
conflict with it?
WE ARE ADMITTING TO BE BREAKERS OF THE LAW
Then we admit that the law reveals something new to us,
something magnificent, something we have not in ourselves,
our nature and our hearts and what we should have. Admitting
that we are in a conflict with the law through the principles
of our sinful nature, we allow God to work with us. Taking a
humble attitude toward God in such a way, we allow His voice
to overpower the voice of our Me. Then He speaks to us and
reveals himself the sublime sense of His demands. (His voice
fills us with confidence for it
reveals God's character worthy of our confidence.)
Thereby the law fulfils its purpose, for it induces us not to rely
upon ourselves anymore, but to rely with our will upon God exclusively
and solely.
By admitting that we are under the law, we show that we are not able
by our nature to fulfil the demands of the law, but, on the other hand,
by confidence in God we accept Him to do it in us by His Holy Spirit.
And for those who relate themselves with God, "nothing will be
impossible" (Matthew 17:20).