ONE OF THE BIGGEST SNARES that will kill off the pursuit of enjoying a full measure of love, respect, significance, and security is the belief that you know right and wrong.
Go back to the beginning, at the moment of your first awakening, when you first knew that something was wrong. Something happened out there and you made a determination, in the immaterial part of yourself—your mind and heart, your thoughts and feelings—that you were in danger.
It was the first moment that you believed you could save yourself, and after considering the information available to you, you developed your first strategy to make everything right again.
That strategy led to your behavior.
Your behavior was the result of your best thinking.
My first memory was based on a very benign circumstance. I was in no danger, but I had been frightened. I had never, to my knowledge, been afraid before, but the feelings were not comfortable.
I may have cried, as a way to get my parent’s attention, and I may have been shushed or ignored, but I have no memory of that. All I remember were loud noises and big people talking amongst themselves.
In the moment of my awakening, I have a clear memory, even today more than fifty years later, of sitting in a bed, presumably my bed, and hearing a voice inside myself.
It was my inner voice.
It was astonishing, and quite pleasing to me, that as I sat there, I soon knew that I was in a conversation with myself.
I touched each of my toes and looked at the fingers on my hands, and as I did, I could hear this strange voice speaking the name of each appendage back to me.
No one was paying attention to me, or this lively conversation I was having with myself, but I soon knew that I could speak the word “mama” and “dada” in my mind, even while looking at my parents, and they could not hear my voice.
My first strategy was born.
I believed that if I did not speak out loud, I could be invisible to others.
As a way to keep myself safe in the future, I would not cry or speak out loud, but rather, I could entertain myself in the company of my inner voice, my new friend, and I would not be alone. In the future, when I did cry or speak out loud, and I soon regretted doing so because of something worse happening to me, my strategy was reinforced.
Death whispered to me, “Hide your outer voice. It is dangerous to speak what you think or feel.”
Who I am, enjoys talking. I enjoy being heard. However, most people are surprised and sometimes uncomfortable, to be with me in a social setting because when I am not wearing the costume necessary for my work, I am very quiet. I’m sometimes asked if I’m okay or upset because I have nothing to say.
Was I born an introvert, or did I learn the behavior?
I will not even guess what is right, but I do know that faulty beliefs and counterfeit strategies are buried deep in the psyche.
What I do know about myself is that I am introspective. I would rather be invisible in a social setting and observe what is going on than to be the “life of the party”.
I learned as a small child that it is not safe to speak when I do not know that what I am saying is right, and if there is a chance that I can be wrong, Shame and Humiliation will be right there, in my inner voice, to inflict pain and remove a certain amount of love, respect, significance, and security that I covet.
Some of our biggest conflicts were born out of the faulty belief that something is wrong, always out there, with whatever—a spouse, a child, a friend or foe, an employee, the boss, a product or service, the competition, the economy, the government, and etcetera.
Space in one’s thinking for a different way to approach his or her conflicts is necessary because, until one can see that being right is the fastest trip to Death’s door, a person will believe that what is out there is wrong. Whatever it is out there will ring alarms and awaken him or her to the very real possibility that he or she will lose something.
It should be said that if you refuse to believe whatever, then even with the evidence to the contrary, you will not believe.
Without the space to allow for the possibility that what you believe can be right and wrong, or neither right or wrong, you will believe the way that you see right and wrong is right.
To believe you know what is right and what is wrong is the very thing that keeps you in bondage.
I am not saying there is not a right and wrong, but I am saying there are consequences to both right and wrong.
What I am saying is that being right is not the end goal.
Death wants you and me to believe that being right is good and if you are right then you are good.
Death says being right is good and being wrong is evil.
The problem with using right and wrong as your compass for life is that there must be a loser in order for you to win the race you are in to get to the place where you can finally rest.
The race to victory began as a child and at some point, at least by your teenage years, your caregivers had to lose. You may have had other family members, friends, or teachers who had to lose.
And unless you are different from anyone I have ever coached, religious or atheist, there was a day when God had to lose as well.
That day occurred for me the day my newborn daughter died. To be certain, God was the loser many times before, but that day was a turning point for me.
I had done nothing wrong to cause my daughter’s death. In fact, I had done everything right. I read every book I could find on pregnancy; I quit smoking and drank lots of water; I quit my job and came home to roost; I walked daily and ate healthily.
I did my part, and I remember the day when the doctor stood in front of me and held his large hands out and said, “In surgeries like these, I turn my hands over to God because only God can save babies as sick as yours.” At that moment, I knew God was wrong.
That scene was replayed for me on the day I met Jesus after he asked why I call myself Christian. I cannot explain it, but with the eyes of my heart, I saw tears in his eyes and without saying it out loud, I heard his words, I know the sting of death.
At that moment, I no longer had a conflict with the Lord, and I felt reconciled and restored to him.
The loss brings about grief and the effects of loss will linger long after the gut-wrenching feelings subside.
Great loss is the catalyst for a lethal faulty belief and counterfeit strategy and one Death will nurture. He whispers:
You did not deserve that blow.
You were right and God was wrong.
God has caused your pain, shame, guilt, and humiliation, and if he loved you, he would have saved you from this loss.
From here on out, you must trust in yourself.
Let’s put up a wall between you and God, and you will be hidden from him.
You must go to church, as you have been doing, so you will not let others see your anger towards him.
But you do not have to believe what he says.
You now must know that if God is impotent to save you from evil, then no one can save you.
You must face the reality that you are alone.
Whatever becomes of you will be based on what you can achieve alone.
You must know that you will be safer to trust only in yourself.
It is God and Love that has hurt you so deeply.
Let’s also build a wall around your heart, so that you will not risk this kind of deep pain again, for you know this pain almost killed you.
Can you remember when you trusted the words of Death and blamed God for your loss?
Something bad happened, and failing a person, place, or thing to blame, you reasoned that God, if there is such a thing, had to be blamed?
And if you were unable to reconcile that a God, who allows bad things to happen, is also good, can you see how you might find it impossible to trust such a being?
Today, I recognize that if it is true that God is good, and my tendency is to regard him as bad when life doesn’t occur the way I want, how I want, and when I want, either God is wrong, or I am wrong.
The only things I know for certain are that I am imperfect, and I cannot control every bad thing that happens.
I also know for certain that my faulty beliefs tell me otherwise.
I know for certain that I cannot save myself and you cannot save me either, nor am I able to save you.
I need a savior if I am ever to get out of Death’s trap, and that leaves me with two choices.
I can die imprisoned or I can stand for the possibility of freedom through the only power over Death that I have been able to find.
Even if that power, in my mind, is both right and wrong, good and evil.
Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.–Genesis 2:8-9
The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”–Genesis 2:15-17
“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.–Genesis 3:4-7
Acts 16:31,Psalm 50:6, Romans 10:9-10,James 5:9, 1 Corinthians 4:5, Exodus 34:6-7a, Matthew 7:11, John 16:33, Nahum 1:7, 2 Corinthians 5:17
As always, it is my intent and hope that my words may encourage you wherever you are in your journey.
Please share your thoughts in the comments below or go to the group tab above to share your own experience. It only takes a minute of your time and your words may help others.
If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.–Jesus(Mark 4:23)
