4.4 How, Exactly?
Now we know who God is. We know who we are. We understand our predicament and how God is offering to help us. So how, exactly, can we implement all this understanding? The stakes could not be higher, so we do not want empty platitudes or high minded concepts. We desperately need actionable, real world applications for these insights. Thankfully, they have been given to us.
The disciples had the same questions we do. They asked Christ how they should pray and he taught them. How, exactly, did Jesus teach us to pray? In secret. First, we must go into our room, close the door behind us, and pray to God in secret. This demonstrates our genuine belief that we need help, not the praise of our brothers and sisters. It also shows that we take this prayer seriously. We go into our room and close the door behind us not only to pray in secret, but also to cut ourselves off from all other distractions or interests.
If we do not receive Christ’s salvation then we are doomed to act out the same disordered beliefs that we have time and again. We do not want to do this! Receiving the Freedom that Christ alone can give is more important than anything else. It is one thing to say this, to think it is true, but we act out what we believe. Do we believe we are powerless to stop the waves of the Flood from overwhelming us? Or do we think it was a simple mistake and we can do better next time? By beginning our day in secret and in solitude, we act out a belief that without Christ’s teaching, we will end up bringing the disordered beliefs of our ancestors into the world around us as conflict.
Ok, so we are in our room, alone, focused, wanting Christ to change our hearts, how do we begin? “Enter my gates with thanksgiving and my courts with praise.” We begin a conversation with God by rightly giving him the thanks and praise that he deserves. Regardless of what our situation in life is, God has given and done so much that if we cannot begin with thanksgiving and praise, then we are surely caught up in disordered beliefs.
The simple fact of our existence is enough to lead us to thank and praise him. Were you there when God decided to create you? Did you plead with God to give you life? Was he convinced by your arguments and long list of attributes to call you into being? No, of course not. Our existence is a pure expression of God’s unimaginable Love. Everything we experience, even those things we foolishly label as “painful” or “bad” are subservient to this great gift. Who are we to complain to our Creator about our experiences? Without him we would not even exist to have those experiences!
Since we now possess the framework to see and understand that there is nothing bad or evil in our lives, it is proper to set our ridiculous, inherited beliefs aside and begin with gratitude. Gratitude naturally and inexorably leads to praise. We praise God for all the unimaginably good things he has done and which we are thankful for. Even if we had a million years, we could never have dreamed of doing what he has accomplished! We praise him, glorify him, because he is our Father and we are his children. We humbly acknowledge that he is greater than we are, and we owe all we have to him. This gives birth to praise.
So we’ve entered through his gates and passed through his courts. Now we stand before the throne of the King of all Creation. What do you ask a king for? His kingdom. You ask a king for what only the king can give you. “The kingdom of God is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” All our ancestors, no matter when or where they lived, desired these things, yet without Christ they could never find them. All our ancestors have been wracked with shame and guilt, unable to live the righteous life they desired to live. Ignorant of the waves of the Flood, and their inherited beliefs, they were unable to stop themselves from acting out the foolish beliefs of Adam and Eve.
Genuinely believing that math textbooks were what they had to use to catch fish, they never succeeded. This prevented them from ever finding peace because they knew they were supposed to be catching fish. Their constant failure left them stressed and afraid. They never got to experience the joy of success and triumph through the Holy Spirit. We can. We can turn to Christ and ask for a fishing pole. Then we can easily and peacefully catch our fish and joyfully celebrate our success, free from the shame and guilt of failure.
How much better is this than asking God to solve our problems or give us treasure? We have so many problems because we believe things about the world which aren’t true! What is God supposed to do, make fish attracted to math textbooks?! Our problem is not with other people or our circumstances. It is in what we believe to be true about those things. Christ, the King of kings, is the only one who can give us beliefs which are True. This is what we ask him for when we stand before his throne.
Then we leave. We don’t stay behind and act like he needs something from us in return. We don’t stick around, fearful of offending him with a hasty exit. He needs nothing and he is more than aware of our dysfunctional situation. He knows the only reason we have come to him is because we need something from him. There is no shame in coming to him, asking for it, receiving it, and then leaving. There is nothing about our relationship with God that is transactional. There is no bargain to be made or price to be paid with all kinds of long winded prayers. He isn’t offended. He wants to see us live a life defined by righteousness, peace and joy out in the world. Not standing and fidgeting in front of him.
Having received the gift of God’s Kingdom, we go out into the world. To clear skies and sunshine? No! To the storms of the Flood! We are on a mission, not a holiday! The lovely, delightful part of our existence will be greater than we can possibly imagine, once we enter Eternity. For now, the Quintentium is still enforced and this means all our brothers and sisters are doomed to act out all the ridiculous imaginings that our ancestors did. We will always be tempted to respond in kind. Whether pain and suffering are real or not, our imaginings and beliefs make them real. As we experience the consequences of these beliefs in bad, wrong, evil and most unfortunately: justice, how will we respond?
When we go out into the world and interact with our siblings, we are going to be constantly confronted by our ignorance of their intentions. Our imagination is then going to rise up, filled with our beliefs, and seek to fill that void. This is the storm of our perception that we must choose to courageously embrace. Just as we put our trust in the Eucharist, despite how it appears, we must put our trust in all our brothers and sisters. There are only good people doing good things, no matter what that ends up looking like in our day to day lives.
So that we can be even more practical and concrete, let’s run through a prayer which acknowledges what the Quintentium reveals:
Eternal Father,
Thank you that I exist to encounter your Love.
Help me to humbly accept that I am your child, Loved and adored, destined to be like you in every way, but currently ignorant, confused and undeveloped, so I am not always going to understand the form that your Love takes.
Thank you for being so unimaginably good and for sending us your Son to prove that you are more good than we could ever dream.
Because I can never imagine how good you actually are, help me to humbly lay down my desire to fill the void of my ignorance with my imagination.
Christ, Eternal Brother, please teach me to believe what is True. Set me Free from my inherited beliefs, so that I can courageously move forward into the ignorance of the world and transform the fear it presents me with back into Love.
Please partner with me to return this Love to our Father so that our Family may be more quickly reunited.