What I Believe Matters

In my previous post I wrote about how I was led through a process of deliverance ministry after I realised that I was in a state of spiritual bondage. In the course of this process I came to awareness that I was in the grip of generational curses because family members on both the maternal and paternal sides of my family had dabbled in the occult. This was a shocking realisation in a number of ways. The first being that the choices that my grandparents made in their lives had such an impact on me during the course of my life. The second was that what they did, either knowingly or unknowingly, had such significant import on different levels. My eyes have been opened to see that involvement in secret societies such as Freemasonry and Rosicrucian Orders can affect people in a range of ways- spiritually, emotionally, mentally and physically. The third was that dabbling in the occult is very dangerous and that people should be made aware of this reality.

The cultural environment that I was formed in was very rationalistic and spiritual reality was either ignored or scoffed at. It was taken for granted that all reality could be accounted for and explained in rationalistic terms. It was understood that reason and science had taken over from the previous religious and superstitious notions of the distant past. Religious understanding was a crutch for those who were weak and insecure. I was taught to take control of my own life and destiny. My mentors told me that I had the freedom to choose; and needed to make my own choices in life in order to control whether or not I was successful and happy. What I chose was up to me and whatever my choices were did not really matter.

In this social climate what I chose to believe in philosophical or religious terms was a personal matter which affected no one else. Those who chose to believe in a greater divine reality advocated religious tolerance. They contended that there were many paths to God and whichever I chose did not matter; as long as I was sincere in what I believed and practised. It would do me good and make me a better person.

Despite the assertions to the contrary I found that I had a deep sense that there was another reality beyond the apparent everyday reality I was confronted by. There was a profound yearning to fill a deep void within me. I began to search for something to fill this void during my teen years.  I read many esoteric books and one in particular influenced me. This was a book called The Third Eye, which was purported to have been an autobiography of a Tibetan Lama (monk) called Lobsang Rampa. (I discovered later on that he was an Englishman called Cyril Hoskin, who claimed that he had been taken over by the spirit of a Lama.) After reading it I began practicing meditation exercises which were given in the book. Through this I began to have ’outer body’ experiences in which I could look down on myself from above. After a while I stopped practising this, but with hindsight I recognise that damage was already done. Scripture tells us that any occult practice is forbidden. It was one of the things that the Holy Spirit brought to mind when I confessed to my two friends. I had to renounce practicing occult activity through this meditation. The spiritual bondage that Satan had over me because of it had to be broken. He uses this to harm us and bring us under his control.

I later underwent confirmation in the Presbyterian Church my family had membership of. The preparation for confirmation involved learning doctrinal pronouncements; and being taught what the religious liturgy and rituals meant. Religious rituals were carried out which did not touch me or inspire me to continue with church attendance after I had been confirmed.

 Looking back on the time I spent in this church I now see that certainly the Minister and many of the Elders of the church were Free Masons. Once a year the Sunday morning service was run by Free Masons; with certain Elders playing prominent roles. This was accepted practice. It was no wonder that the church was ‘spiritually dead’; and I was not drawn to participate in it.

However, the Lords grace was at work and a young Presbyterian Assistant Minister called Gus Hunter visited me at home and invited me to a youth meeting. He was warm, accepting and had a good sense of humour; and because of this I was moved to continue attending the youth group. I recognised that there was something that he had which I wanted. I was prevented from following through with what I was drawn to because I was called up to undergo  military training and ended up going to Walvis Bay for six months in what was then South West Africa (now Namibia).

On my return I went with some friends to celebrate my homecoming. We got very high by smoking dagga (marijuana) and then went to a hotel where we continued to drink beer. It was night-time and we were sitting at a table outside under the stars. Suddenly I had an intense awareness of the presence of an evil force which was trying to take over my mind. This made me very afraid and I realised that I was dealing with something which was far bigger than myself and that I was not in control of the situation. I immediately did the only thing I could think of and cried out to the Lord in my mind, saying: “Jesus help me!” In an instant I was absolutely sober and clear headed and the evil presence had vanished. I was shocked beyond words to describe it. This was a massive wake up call for me. It confronted me with the fact that what I did mattered. Engaging in unhealthy activities such as taking drugs opened me up to evil influence. On the other hand I was shown that when I called out to the Lord he acted.This led me to choose to commit my life to the Lord.

 Reflecting on this experience it is possible to rationalise the fact that my experience of the evil presence was merely a drug induced hallucination. However, when I was confronted with the evil presence I ‘knew’ beyond a shadow of a doubt what it was. It is also impossible for me to understand or explain how I became instantly sober and clear headed other than that the Lord had saved me from a life threatening situation by his grace.

The upshot of all this is that I learnt through personal experience that what I believe and what I do both matter. I have also come to realize that we have an adversary who is waiting for opportunities to seduce and trick us into believing and acting inappropriately so that he can ensnare us and bring us into bondage of some sort. This awareness is strongly counter-cultural in this day and age; but it is very real, and we ignore it at our peril.

Questions for reflection:

·         Have you participated in any form of occult activity?

·         Do you suffer from some form of addictive behaviour?

·         Has an evil presence confronted you?

·         Do you want to be set free?

Being Set Free

In my last blog post I told how I discovered that I was in spiritual bondage- bound, gagged and in prison. This had come about firstly through receiving a ‘Father Wound’ at the hand of my flesh and blood father. When I prayed and asked the Lord to show me what my Father Wound was I was reminded of an experience I had when I was about four years old. We lived on a forest farm in a place called Lothair in the Eastern Transvaal. My father worked at the saw mill which converted the trees into usable timber. A friend and I started a small fire on the edge of the forest plantation. To our dismay the fire rapidly spread and set the main forest on fire. The experience of the huge, raging fire was horrific and overwhelming for me. Workers soon summoned my father who ran towards me. Instead of holding, protecting and saving me from this dreadful reality as I had hoped he proceeded to give me an awful beating. He kept hitting me, and when I tried to give expression to my pain and anguish by crying out he continually shouted at me to “Shut Up!” In order to try and stop the beating I pursed my lips and stifled my cries. Somehow that response became lodged within my consciousness; emblazoned within my psyche. After that I could no longer speak fluently and began stuttering.

The people in my social circle both reprimanded and chided me because of my non-fluent speech, which had the effect of making my speech pattern worse. It was a vicious cycle because the more this happened the worse my speech became. The children were the worst culprits. The boys took to mocking me, beating me up and excluding me from their games. The effect of this rejection was that I began to feel worthless. The end result was that I rejected myself and had very little self esteem. This eventually spawned the self-destructive attitudes I wrote about in my last post; of self-rejection, self-pity and fear.

In ‘Wild at Heart’ John Eldredge says that after the initial Father Wound we are repeatedly wounded in the same spot through the course of our life. This has the effect of immobilizing us; and hinders our growth and development. As I have reflected on my own life I believe that what he says is true. This is the sinister plan of our enemy Satan. Ultimately, as we saw in my last post, our fight is not against flesh and blood, but against Principalities and Powers of a dark nature. In our rationalistic age everything is reduced to physical and chemical forces; and there is a belief that we have rational control over all reality. That was what I was brought up to believe was true. In the last six years my eyes have been opened to recognize a very different situation. I have come to see that there is a far greater ‘reality’ beyond the apparent reality that I took for granted for the first fifty years of my life. This spiritual reality impacts on us in ways that are beyond our ability to comprehend. If not for the process I have been through, which I have been unpacking in this blog, I would not have been able to recognize this fact.  The Apostle Paul alludes to the fact that we all have a spiritual ‘veil’ over our faces that prevents us from recognizing spiritual reality (2 Corinthians 3:12-18). Only as we turn to our True Father and seek understanding is it given to us through the Holy Spirit. The spiritual veil is lifted so that we can see what was right in front of us, yet could not see before.

The Holy Spirit gave me awareness that I was trapped in spiritual bondage and I was drawn to read a passage in James 5:16: “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.” This led me to approach a member of our church staff team who I trusted and told her that I believed that I was in spiritual bondage. She arranged for me to meet with her and another male staff member (who happened to be a retired Anglican Bishop). They began to lead me through a deep process of confession and deliverance ministry. What ensued was four sessions of ministry which took place at two week intervals. This was an organic process in which all three of us listened to the direction of the Holy Spirit. In preparation for each session I asked the Holy Spirit to reveal to me what I needed to confess. At first I was taken back to my early childhood and the Holy Spirit brought to mind many things that I had either forgotten, had buried deep within me because of their traumatic nature, or had not been aware of before then. I duly confessed to my two ministers what came to mind. They both listened and asked appropriate questions, to which I responded. Through this many things came to light .

A primary reality that emerged was that my maternal grandmother had been a Rosicrucian member and my paternal grandfather had been a Freemason. Therefore, knowingly or unknowingly (I could not tell) they had become involved in the occult. Lower level members of these orders more often than not do not realise what they are involved with. Their understanding is normally that they are receiving secret knowledge that can benefit them and their family. They do not understand the dire implications; and that they are meddling with the dark things of Satan. Satan usually poses as Lucifer, ‘The Light Bearer’, who gives people knowledge and power that they would not otherwise receive. In these secret societies Lucifer is seen as the good guy and the God of the Bible as the bad one. They therefore unwittingly end up in spiritual bondage to Satan. Scripture makes clear that occult involvement results in curses being inflicted on the practitioner and their family; even to succeeding generations. I was therefore subject to generational curses from both sides of my family. Not a good place to be. Because of this my adversary was able to bring me into spiritual bondage even though I had given my life to the True Lord and not the imposter who has tried to usurp his Lordship. Satan was not able to ‘possess’ me because of my commitment to the Lord (who I belonged to), but he was able to ‘oppress’ me. It felt as though I carried a heavy weight on my shoulders; and had deep, dark bouts of depression. This robbed me of the joy of life.

After confessing what came into the light and renouncing any involvement in the occult, the ties my adversary had over me were broken. I instead committed myself to actively love and serve the True Lord. Through the ministry I received during those sessions the Lord of Life was able to set me free from my spiritual bondage. It felt as though the weight of the world was lifted from my shoulders and I have come to know an inner peace that I never dreamt possible. I (we) love and serve an awesome God.  I will give greater details of all this in my next post.

 Questions for reflection:

·         Have you or any of your family members (especially parents and grandparents) been involved in secret societies such as Rosicrucian and Freemason orders?

·         Are you sufficiently aware of the implications for them and for yourself?

·         Do you want to be set free from the spiritual bondage you have been subjected to?

 

 

 

Healing My Wounds

My previous blog post focussed on why I ran away from what I believed the Lord was calling me to. I said that I found that I was trapped in, and imprisoned by, toxic attitudes of self- rejection, self- pity, and fear. I had taken these self -destructive attitudes on as a result of mental and emotional wounds that I received because I stuttered. The people in my social group (especially the children) mocked me, and treated me with derision and scorn. This moved me to a place where I embraced deep shame. Taken together this effectively immobilised me and ‘took me out’. I could therefore not experience the ‘fullness of life’ that Jesus came to lead me into.

As I mentioned, I had made a commitment to the Lord at the age of nineteen and through the years God had worked in my life to bring about significant healing and wholeness. However, I was still not free from the effects of my childhood trauma; which had left me with a festering, cancerous wound at the core of my being. This wound prevented me firstly, from functioning freely; and secondly, coming to recognise and embrace my True Self that my True Father had created me to be. It hindered me from discovering the image of God that was imprinted within me when my True Father loved me into being. Jonah went through a three day period in the belly of the great fish that transformed him. I now want to look in more detail at the five year ‘Jonah Experience’ that I went through that transformed me. 

When I had my first heart attack some six plus years ago what I experienced was that my True Father was waiting for me to return to Him; in the same way that the father was waiting for his son to come home in the story that Jesus told which is known as “the story of the prodigal son”. The intimacy of relationship that we previously had was restored. It was I who had chosen to flee into the spiritual desert I found myself in for twenty long years. My Father was patiently waiting for my return. Being restored to intimate relationship with my Father was a significant healing experience in itself. It filled a deep void within my soul.

 Yet the toxic wound was still there deep within me. Major surgery needed to be undertaken to cut it out. At just the right time I read a book called ‘Wild at Heart’, written by John Eldredge. He contended that, as Scripture tells us, we have an enemy called Satan (whose name means ‘adversary’); whose mission it is to wound us and ‘take us out’. Whereas Jesus is the Good Shepherd who cares for and protects his sheep; Jesus spoke of Satan as being a robber whose purpose it is to steal, kill and destroy them. In contrast the purpose of Jesus is to give life in all its fullness (John 10:10). Eldredge said that through his own experiences and those of many other people he came to recognize that Satan influenced a person’s own father to wound them in a significant way. This ‘Father Wound’ was inflicted at the exact point where the True Self of that person was. This was where their God-given giftedness flowed from. It prevented them from discovering and living out of their True Self and exercising their giftedness. This precluded them from fully being and manifesting the ‘image of God’ that they were created to be.  This understanding opened my eyes to see the reality of my life, and my woundedness, in a new way.

Eldredge stressed the fact that we are engaged in spiritual warfare. We have to literally fight for our freedom. We read in Ephesians 6:12: “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

 Many people, including Christians do not take this seriously; and neither did I. It made me realise that in order to find both healing and freedom I would need to fight for it. However, I could not do it in my own strength; I needed the power of God to do it for me. Jesus defeated Satan by what he accomplished on the Cross. I needed to be ‘in Christ’ and be set free by the same power that raised Jesus from death. It could only be done ‘in the name of Jesus’. The name of Jesus carried the power and authority of Jesus.

A catalyst in this process of finding healing and freedom was having a momentous dream. I woke up in the middle of the night after this dream and had a strong sense that it was saying something important to me. I therefore prayed and asked the Lord what this dream meant. Two words came into my mind: “Unholy Alliance”. It took a long time (many weeks) of praying and listening to come to an understanding of what this dream meant. For sake of brevity I will only say here that through this I came to see that Satan is the ultimate crooked salesman. His stock- in- trade is lies, deceit and illusion. As soon as we buy a lie that he sells us we enter into an Unholy Alliance with him. Through this alliance he has a spiritual hold over us. We become bound to him in a mystical way and this brings us into bondage. We become bound with a rope or chain, which restricts our freedom; and he then also has power over us. The more lies and deceit we buy the more in bondage we become. We can even end up being locked behind closed doors, in prison. Eventually this can become a dark dungeon; with little, or no light. Finding freedom at this later stage is difficult indeed.

Nothing is impossible for Our Lord however. There are many marvellous stories of people being set free from extreme states of bondage. Satan, the dark master over the dead, has great power; but it is nothing in comparison with the awesome power of the Living God (See 1Kings Ch 18).

The end result of all this was that I discovered that I was in a state of spiritual bondage; bound and gagged, and in prison. The bondage I was in restricted my freedom to access my True Self. It also severely curtailed my ability to verbally express who I am. I needed to be set free. We will look at how this took place; and continues to take place; in my next post.

Questions for reflection:

·         How do you respond to what I have written above?

·         Are you in spiritual bondage?

·         Do you want the Lord to set you free?

 

Why I Ran Away

In my last post I related how I ran away from what I believed the Lord was calling me to do and ended up in a spiritual desert (my own ‘dark night of the soul’) for about twenty years. The question I have had to face has been: “Why did I do this?” At the time I was very committed to the Lord and experienced an intimate relationship with him; so what made me run away?

In a previous post I looked at the fact that Jonah was a prophet who had an intimate relationship with the Lord, and was able to dialogue with him. He ran away from what God was calling him to do because he had been formed by his society to take on attitudes of suspicion, hatred and fear with regard to the Assyrians he was being sent to. His mission was to bring them to repentance and thereby save them from being destroyed. Jonah wanted them to be destroyed, not spared.

It has become clear that my own reasons for running away are both similar, but also different from those that Jonah had. Like Jonah I had taken on negative, destructive attitudes that stood in the way of following through with what I believed the Lord was calling me to do. In my case however, these poisonous attitudes were not directed at those I was being called to reach out to. They were directed at myself. Be that as it may, they had the same effect of preventing me from fulfilling what the Lord wanted to happen. In the Jonah story his trip to Tarshish took a lot less time than my sojourn in the spiritual desert I found myself in. His time in the belly of the fish was also only three days, as opposed to the five year ‘Jonah experience’ I went through. It did in the end have a similar effect on me as it had on Jonah; it moved me from resistance to compliance.

Jonah had taken on his destructive attitudes firstly during childhood from his father Amittai, who mediated the truth of the Hebrew society they were embedded in; and then later from the society itself as he moved out into it as a man. In like manner I had taken on my toxic attitudes firstly from my father; and then from my wider social group; and society at large. To recap from previous posts, we take on our attitudes unconsciously, without realising that we have them. We are therefore most often blind to recognise them within us. Something external usually has to impact on us to bring us to awareness of them. Even though we are unaware of them they still affect us very powerfully and predispose the way we think, feel and act.

I was therefore initially blind to see my distorted attitudes, which gave me a distorted perception of reality. What first opened my eyes to begin to recognise them was the experience I had on an eight day silent Ignatian retreat that I made whilst I was working as a field worker in CLC (see my previous blog post).  During this retreat I found myself in a figurative cave in darkness for the first five days.  My ability to pray and commune with God was stifled; in a way I had not known for many years. I felt that I was in a place of inner darkness; trapped inside this cave. As I prayed into what this was about I was given to understand that this cave was a tomb, but also a womb. It was a place of both death and new life. Something within me had to die in order for me to realise new life. The more I prayed into the nature of this cave the clearer it became that this was a cave of self rejection, self pity and fear. These three powerful attitudes had me in their grip. I was trapped and imprisoned by them. On the retreat during a time of prayer on the sixth day I then experienced release; and was enabled to leave the cave and walk out into the light; significantly freer.

One of my spiritual mentors had taught me that a retreat experience is like a chapter heading for the next phase of our life. What happens on the retreat has to be integrated into the lived reality of our day to day life; or else it has no relevance. Little did I know at the time that the five days of darkness inside the cave on the retreat would translate into twenty years of dark, desert experience in my everyday life. Neither would I have imagined that the breakthrough I was looking for would come in the form of a heart attack. Our God is truly a God of mystery and surprises.

After the retreat I had a very strong awareness that I was trapped in attitudes of self rejection, self pity and fear. I had stuttered from an early age and the response I received from my social group was rejection, derision, mockery and exclusion. The way I saw myself mirrored the way my social group treated me. I felt that I was worthless and useless; so I adopted an attitude of self rejection. I had a very deep sense of shame. Following on from this I had taken on an attitude of self pity. I had a victim mentality and felt that society had wronged me and therefore owed me (an attitude of entitlement). Because of my history of rejection and victimisation I lived with the fear that this was always going to happen in the future and so became trapped in fear. I withdrew deep within myself, and it became a type of prison (dark dungeon).

 Having my eyes opened to see this reality was one thing. Letting go of these toxic attitudes was another. I was well and truly bound and imprisoned by them. They effectively prevented me from freely carrying out the role of doing field work. They also precluded me from being able to see my God –given giftedness and True Self that my True Father had created me to be.  Jonah needed to be swallowed by a fish in order to move towards embracing a new reality. I ended up in the belly of a hospital ICU, waiting for my broken heart to be revived. This was the start of a process that would entail not only physical, but also mental, emotional and spiritual healing.

Having said this I need to point out that I had been a committed Christian since the age of nineteen. I had come a long way from the extreme brokenness of my youth. The Lord had already worked great transformation in my life. There had been significant movement within me towards inner healing and wholeness; but the attitudes I was imprisoned by went very deep indeed. They needed drastic action to bring about deep transformation. The Holy Spirit had to act as a surgeon and use a sharp scalpel to cut away the putrid, cancerous wound within my soul.

Questions for reflection:

·         Are you deeply wounded?

·         Can you recognize destructive attitudes within yourself?

·         Are you open to change and transformation?

I Am Who I Am

This week I continue on from last week where I looked at my emerging awareness of the necessity of finding and living out of my True Identity in Christ. I said that I am discovering that I am not who I thought I was. In the first half of my life I had taken on a ‘social identity' and believed that was who I was. However, the process of transformation I am undergoing is revealing that this social identity I had embraced was actually an illusion. It was a false perception of reality. This social identity was a False Self that I had become trapped in- a type of prison. It needed something extraneous and drastic to impact on me in order to both set me free and open my eyes to perceive a new reality. The ‘Jonah experience’ that I went through was very difficult and painful, but necessary; because without it I would not have been able to see and experience what I do know. It has set me on a new path of discovering and living out of the reality of my True Self in Christ.

In the past eighteen months I have been intensely reflecting on my life journey; and especially my spiritual journey which has been an integral part of it. One of my spiritual mentors was fond of saying that an unreflected life is not worth living; and I sincerely agree. Looking back has given me insight and perspective on what has happened through the course of this journey; which at any one time I was blind to see, because I was so caught up in the events.

This has taken me back to a time some twenty five years ago when I decided to take my relationship with and commitment to God to another level. At that stage I had been involved in an Ignatian lay Christian contemplative community for about four years. This was called Christian Life Communities (CLC).The director of CLC asked me to consider working full-time as a field worker, travelling around the Eastern Cape to encourage and facilitate the spiritual formation of the members of the groups that had been established there. I felt that the Lord was calling me to respond positively to this; and so I did. When I began this work I asked the director what my job description was. His reply was: “Be yourself!” That was it; my primary job description. My initial response was that this was great; there was no pressure to perform within a particular mould.

It did not take me long to realize two things however. The first was that I did not fully understand what the director meant by saying that I must ‘be myself’. It was something of a mystery to me what that actually meant in practice. The second thing followed on from this: I did not know who I was. After nine months of wrestling with this I came to see that I was in fact a spiritual clone of the director; who had been my mentor and role model. I had unconsciously taken on his spiritual identity as my own. I did not know who "I” really was. I could therefore not fulfil my mandate of being myself. There was a lack of awareness of my own spiritual identity; and therefore I did not possess secure inner consciousness of my own spiritual authority. I might have known it on an intellectual head level; having a theological understanding of being ‘in Christ’, and the priesthood of all believers. Yet I did not have it at a heart level, within the depths of my being. Something was missing; there was a void within my soul. I could therefore not, with any integrity, continue working as a field worker. I duly resigned.

This led to me finding myself in a spiritual desert of sorts. I began a long period of what can only be called my own ‘dark night of the soul’. This lasted around twenty years. I continued to attend church and never lost my faith in God, but I dropped out of any leadership or serious role in the church. The previous deep intimacy that I had known with God vanished like mist does when the baking sun rises far above the horizon. I found myself in a parched land without water, desperately wanting my thirst to be quenched. I had to wait a long, long, long time for it to happen; but it finally did.

During those dark, arid years my life went on. I initially worked as a joiner/ cabinet-maker; and then started my own joinery business, doing wood work. I found it interesting, engaging and satisfying. Running a business was challenging and stretched me in different ways. It led to personal growth and development on many fronts.

Whilst this was taking place I also began a family. I married Sharon (and her son Euan.) After the three of us got to know each other we had another son, Kyle, a couple of years later. The focus of my attention switched towards my wife and two sons. Between raising my family and running my business my hands were well and truly full. Through these two anchors in my life I began to develop a sense of my identity. This identity was ultimately rooted in the concrete realities of my family and my business.

My business was doing reasonably well, and apart from the usual struggles common to all families, so was my family. I settled into a comfortable state of complacency; secure in what I had, and what I had achieved. This led to a newfound, secure, sense of identity. To me, all was well. The problem was that my Loving Heavenly Father had other ideas. I now recognize with hindsight that to him all was not well. When he looked at me he saw that I was trapped in a False Identity; which was rooted in a false reality. Despite being oblivious to it, I was living a half-life and not the “fullness of life” that Jesus died on the Cross to secure for me. I was selling myself short by living with the illusion that what I had was the full package. I was in fact running away from reality in the same way that Jonah had run away from it so long ago. My True Father was doing me a massive favour when he sent the great fish to swallow me in the guise of a heart attack.

When I ended up out of control and flat on my back in ICU what I experienced was neither pain nor panic. Instead, I found myself once more being embraced by the True Father I had run away from for all those years I spent hiding in the desert. I experienced deep inner peace and contentment. The light of his presence chased away my inner darkness; and my desperate thirst was finally satisfied. Not only that, I began to realize at a heart level who I really am. I am the son of my True Father, who loved me into being.  I know that my True Identity is rooted and grounded in my relationship with my Heavenly Father; and nothing else. Everything else is illusion and unreality.

Questions for reflection:

·         Do you know who you really are?

·         Are you secure in your identity?

·         What is your identity rooted in?

 

 

Finding My True Identity

In this blog post I continue looking at what I have personally learned from the Jonah story. We saw that the meaning of Jonah’s name was ‘Dove’, yet his social group had moulded him to be a hawk. He was living according to the truth that he had received from his father Amittai (whose name meant ‘Truth’). His true spiritual Father, who gave birth to the whole creation, was calling him to see a greater, more expansive truth. This truth was that the ‘Blessings of God’ were available to all the people on earth, even the enemies of his Jewish social group. He was also leading Jonah to recognize and embrace his true identity which was a reflection of his name. I previously mentioned that in Scripture the name of a person often referred to their identity. Yet, Jonah resisted both extending the blessing of God beyond his social group and embracing the reality of his true identity.

What I have been confronted by in this time of transformation that I have been through in the last six years is that I did not know who I really am. I (like every other person) have been created, as Scripture tells us, ‘in the Image of God’ (Genesis 1:26-27). At the core of my being I am therefore a unique reflection of God. However, I did not know what this unique refection is. Like Jonah I had taken on a perception of who I was which accorded with what my social conditioning made me believe I was. My perception of my identity was a reflection of my place within my social group. This was in terms of various overall criteria such as nationality, class, language group, race (especially in South Africa), gender etc. More specifically it had to do with my education level and my perceived gifts and talents. All these factors impacted on my performance and level of achievement in terms of what my society valued as being desirable. In my society success was primarily valued in terms of accumulating wealth (and conspicuous consumption); gaining status (along with status symbols); and exercising power. My perception of my identity was therefore related to these factors; and the degree to which I measured up according to them. They were the external criteria of success and achievement. Especially as a man they were the measure of whether or not I was ‘enough of a man’. This identity I took on I call my ‘social identity,’ because it was rooted in my social situation.

The Christian Church has rightly taught through the centuries the Biblical truth that because of the sin of Adam we his descendents were cut off from relationship with God. Jesus died in order to redeem us from that reality and restore our relationship with God; and this enabled us to become adopted sons and daughters of our True Heavenly Father. This radically changes our status, from being slaves to sin and under the dominion of the ‘Prince of this World’ (Satan), to being members of the family of our True Father, and under his authority.

The Church has however neglected to emphasize the fact that not only are we cut off from our heavenly Father, we are also cut off from our True Self; that part of us that is created in the image of God. There has been a tendency to focus on the sinfulness and depravity of mankind to the exclusion of the reality that we are created in the image of God. This was taken to great height during the Protestant Reformation, especially within Calvinism. If people are constantly told: “You are bad, rotten to the core!” then they end up believing it. It tragically gives them a distorted perception of reality. They fail to recognize the image of God within them.

It has been largely left to the mystics of the Christian Church to retain the reality of the necessity of being re-united with both God and our True Self. They have safe- guarded this reality from being lost. Our True Self is who God created us to be at the core of our being. It is imprinted within us from birth, in the same way that our genetic coding is imprinted within our DNA. This is the basis of our True Identity, which is rooted in our relationship with our True Father. I have had to come to a place of seeing that my true identity is not the ‘social identity’ I took on by virtue of my place within my social group; and my achievements in that context. That was a very conditional identity, which was based on my social heritage and performance. This initial identity that I took on was in fact a ‘False Identity’. This was a distorted perception of reality - an illusion. I am not who I thought I was. This illusory false identity was the persona (or mask) that I hid behind to play out the drama of the first half of my life. It took the ‘Jonah experience’ that I have described in this blog to enable me to begin to recognize a higher and more expansive reality.  It was a difficult and painful experience, but without it I would still be trapped within my false identity.

The problem with our illusions is that they are much like prisons; we become trapped within them and cannot escape without something extraneous impacting on us. What I have come to see is that ultimately this is a spiritual condition. We have an adversary whose mission is to hurt and destroy us; and keep us under his control. Scripture tells us that our adversary is a liar and the father of lies. He is also a master salesman. It is he who sells us the lie that our social identity is our only identity; and as soon as we buy that lie we become trapped in a false identity. We therefore become cut off from our true identity. Satan aims to keep us in that state of illusion, because it separates us from coming to know the “fullness of life” that Jesus died in order for us to receive. Only in coming to know and embracing our True Self can we find our True Identity. This identity is not conditional and dependent on our heritage and performance; but unconditional. We just have to receive it as a free gift from a loving Father. This is a transcendent identity, rooted in our True Heavenly Father and not in society.

This sounds so simple and obvious. However, in my experience there are few people who I have met within the Christian Church who seem to live out of this reality. They accept their salvation that Jesus bought as a ransom by giving his life for theirs, but then soon slip into an ‘Elder Brother’ mentality of joyless labour trying to earn their Fathers love. They are also still trapped in the reality of their false self that they have been conditioned by their society since young to adopt as being their only self. Living out of the reality of our True Identity does not come easily; and requires nothing less than the power of the Holy Spirit; and going through an experience similar to what Jonah went through, of being swallowed by a fish; in whatever guise the Lord chooses to send it.

Questions for reflection;

·         How do you respond to what I have written?

·         Are you living out of your True Identity?

·         Is this something that you want?

Seeing Through New Glasses

This week I continue to look at what I have personally learned from the Jonah story. I previously wrote about the fact that Jonah perceived the world in terms of the ‘truth’ that he received from his father, who mediated the perception of reality held by his social group.  This group perception of reality can be likened to him wearing a pair of glasses, the lenses of which refract what he sees in a particular way. I call this the ‘group consciousness’ of his social group; in his case the Jewish community that had been dominated and held in subjection by the Assyrians.

The lenses of the glasses of ‘group consciousness’ tend to have two intrinsic flaws: they lead to both myopia (short sightedness) and tunnel vision (seeing only a narrow band of reality). In the first instance, it focuses only on the perceived group needs of the present moment. Groups want their present aspirations and needs met, regardless of the consequences for future generations. We need look no further than the ecological disaster waiting to happen that confronts us at present. Secondly, they focus only on their own aspirations and needs, and disregard those of other groups. In the Jonah story the Jewish community that Jonah was a member of looked at the Assyrians with animosity, hatred and fear.

God called Jonah to go to Nineveh, the capital city of Assyria, and call them to repentance so that they would be saved from destruction. By doing this Jonah would be instrumental in extending the ‘Blessing of God’ to the enemies of Jonah’s social group. As depicted in the Jonah story he resisted this and ran away. By being swallowed by the fish and having a near-death experience he underwent a transformation in attitude from resistance to compliance. God was calling Jonah to put on a new pair of glasses, which had different lenses. These lenses would refract what he saw before him in a new way. He would see things more closely to the way that God sees them. These glasses would correct the flaws in the glasses of group consciousness that he had been wearing. He would be enabled by them to begin to see further ahead, into the future; and perceive a new, different reality. He would also begin to perceive a broader reality, one which encompasses the future of other social groups besides his own. He would be set free to recognize that the grace of God is not just confined to the wellbeing of his own particular group, but to others as well.

 I have come to recognize how hard this is for me to embrace. I too, like Jonah, have been trapped in the group consciousness of my own social group. I am a ‘white’ native of South Africa, who was born and raised during the dark days of Apartheid. Growing up in this social climate I naturally took on the group consciousness of my social group. My social reality in South Africa was different from that of Jonah and his Jewish social group during the time that he lived. In my context I was part of a minority ‘white’ group that dominated and held in subjection a majority ‘black’ social group. Due to the fact that they were in the minority the white overlords viewed the black majority with suspicion, animosity and fear.

 In South Africa race was used as a criterion to classify and separate the inhabitants into different groups. These race groups were forcibly moved into separate areas and legal restrictions were placed on the way they interacted with each other. It was a horrendous exercise of social engineering. It was an artificially created reality. The principle of ‘divide and conquer’ was being implemented. Each of these groups then took on the group consciousness of their particular race group and saw reality through the lenses of those glasses. The vested interests of the race group then became paramount. Adding to this situation, the black majority were divided into different tribal groups, creating fragmentation and fostering tribal rivalries. The interests of the tribe and getting as much as they could then became important. The model facilitated the interests of the groups becoming more and more myopic, localised and exclusive.

However, history bears testimony to the fact that the exercise in social engineering was unsuccessful and eventually collapsed. As we well know Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990 and the system of Apartheid was dismantled. A new democratic era began in 1994 with the election of a democratic government. The country moved into an era of hope and promise, especially for those who had been excluded from the freedom and opportunity that the white minority had enjoyed. The challenge for each of the previously segregated communities was to discard the glasses of group consciousness that they had been using and put on new ones. They had to start using glasses with lenses that that had a more expansive, inclusive vision. This was the vision of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who spoke about moving from seeing ourselves as being different, separate, colours in opposition to each other; to seeing ourselves as being part of a Rainbow Nation with a common hope and destiny. Fast forward to the present, the questions that confront me is to what extent has this been my personal experience; and how do I see this being realized in South Africa as a whole?

The short answer is that there has been some movement, but also many hindrances and setbacks; both within myself and the country. Like Jonah, most individuals (including myself) and probably all groups have resisted and tried to run away from changing their previous perceptions of reality. Old habits (including perceptions of reality), as they say, die hard. As I saw in the Jonah story it took a near –death experience to shake him out of his resistance to change. I am praying that the Lord will change my stone heart to accept and embrace a different perception of reality. This includes a change of circumstances that will extend the ‘Blessing of God’ to all in our nation.

 My hope and prayer is that the many opposing groups in our nation will choose to change their respective group consciousnesses to open them up to change as well. As I try and feel the pulse of our nation there appears to be a quickening of pulse rates, along with a perceptible hardening of group hearts. I pray that the entrenched antagonisms, hatred and fear can be healed and defused before they lead us down the horrible road of violence; yet again.

Questions for reflection:

·         Are you aware of the glasses and lenses that you see through?

·         Are you open to change the way you see?

·         Is the Lord inviting you to see things differently?