08 November 2023
I keep bumping into this. People who should know better struggle to understand the Hebrew perspective on things. One of the lies peculiar to the West is the notion that the natural world does not care about you as an individual. Well, all of Creation cares the way God cares. This is more a lie about God than about His Creation.
Everything about the whole of Western Civilization assumes that God is not directly involved and has no personal interest in you. Every element of our western epistemology assumes this. The West clings to the lie that your heart is a repository only of sentiment, and that it is dangerously untrustworthy, that it is little more than emotions. It misreads everything Scripture has to say about the heart.
Yes, the heart is full of darkness and lies in its natural state. When the Lord calls to your soul, He does so through your heart. Your heart can be filled with light and power. You must cooperate with God's choice to reveal Himself to you and through you. The heart is the place where you become aware of all that.
If you ignore your heart and keep your conscious awareness in your head, you are wholly unable to commune with God or His Creation. You cannot receive the revelation of God regarding what He has done. In this state, you are wholly unable to grasp the dire necessity of the Covenant. Under the Covenant, nothing in reality is random.
For purposes of this discussion, there is no functional difference between Creation, reality, the natural world, etc. The different words are simply a matter of emphasis, all referring to the same living entity that our Lord spun out of His Person, for reasons we cannot possibly comprehend. It is alive, sentient and willful. It refers back to God in all things, but you must grasp the notion that reality is a person, too. Reality is paying attention to your individual life, but you must also pay attention to reality as a person.
If you fail on this point, then it will most certainly seem that the natural world is random. You will be utterly unable to grasp how nature operates. You might be able to nail down some of the discrete mechanics, but you won't be able to discern the purpose.
Creation is not fallen; we are. That warning to Adam that the ground would produce thistles and thorns for him says more about Adam's condition than it does about the natural world. The fallen state alienates us from our management of God's Garden, along with all the tools of awareness and communion by which Eden was kept originally.
The only hope for any measure of restoration starts with the mental conception that nature is a person. It can communicate to your heart, if you invest your conscious awareness there. You will lack the full authority Adam held before the Fall, but you will at least be able to communicate reliably with all the physical objects in your life.
The notion that you cannot expect the natural world to assist you in anything is a damned lie, a hateful lie from fools who reject divine revelation. The key to unlocking nature's cooperation is to restore your submission to God according to His revelation. Speak to Creation respectfully and it will tend to comply. The results will ever be imperfect in our mortal form, but they will be noticeable.
Of course, in all things in this life, the focus is the Covenant. The Covenant is simply another name for the character and personality of Jesus Christ. He is the Living Law of God. He speaks through your convictions, and His Book explains what our convictions can and cannot say to us.
Reality is a friend of Covenant people, and I mean that quite literally. I will testify that my devotion to the Covenant is the key to gaining cooperation from God's Creation. It works for me. I'm very sorry about all the people who can't see that, but I reject their lies. They are enemies of the gospel.
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