Zemirah Loc: Sojourner En Route...

Hi rumi,

as you know, both God and "something else" are very real.

God does not contradict His own written Word, so, just as the Bereans were taught, His Word is the 1st place to go to verify that He was the source of your message.

Mathew 5:39 "But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also."

Rather than translating "resist not evil," the ancient source manuscript from which the NASB translates, reads "do not resist an evil person." This makes eminently good sense, since verses 40-42 are obviously talking about real people, not just generic evil.

Count Lyov Nikolayevich Tolstoy, known in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time.

Born: Sept 9, 1828, Yasnaya Polyana, Tula Governorate, Russian Empire
Died: Nov 20, 1910, Astapovo, Ryazan Governorate, Russian Empire

Tolstoy is best known for his two longest works, War and Peace (1865-69) and Anna Karenina (1875-77), which are commonly regarded as among the finest novels ever written.

In the 1870s Tolstoy experienced a profound moral crisis, followed by what he regarded as an equally profound spiritual awakening, as outlined in his non-fiction work A Confession (1882).

His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him to become a fervent Christian anarchist and pacifist. Tolstoy's ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894), were to have a profound impact on such pivotal 20th-century figures as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

Tolstoy founded 13 schools for the children of Russia's peasants, who had just been emancipated from serfdom in 1861. Tolstoy described the school's principles in his 1862 essay "The School at Yasnaya Polyana." Tolstoy's educational experiments were short-lived, partly due to harassment by the Tsarist secret police. As a direct forerunner to A.S. Neill's Summerhill School, the school at Yasnaya Polyana can justifiably be claimed the first example of a coherent theory of democratic education.

Verses don’t stand alone, but are all part of the Scripture as a whole, so we can’t just pick one out here and there without knowing how they all fit together to form the beautiful mosaic they do.

If we stop resisting evil people, the world will plunge into absolute chaos, however, it says in 1st Corinthians 14:33, “…God is not a God of disorder but of peace…”

Romans 13 says that God Himself has established the governing authorities. And one of their main purposes is to “bear the sword,” to be God’s “agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.”

Thus, we maintain the military forces, and we keep the police force. These are God’s chosen instruments for resisting evil people.

Now, we still have Jesus saying, “Do not resist an evil person.”

Could it be that’s not for society at large, but for our individual dealings with others?

Does that mean I just let an evil person take advantage of me? Hurt me? Steal from me? And I do nothing about it?

How does that balance with what Jesus said in Matthew 18?

He said, “If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”

Jesus explains exactly how to deal with someone who sins against you, and that is to confront them and work to bring about justice.

Justice is important to God. In Matthew 23, Jesus put the hammer down on the Pharisees for neglecting justice. Through the Old Testament prophets God often spoke of the importance of justice.

One of the key tenets of justice is that evil is resisted.

If someone does evil, God wants them resisted. He wants his governing authorities to carry out justice, and He wants religious authorities to carry out justice. Even on a personal level, when someone wrongs us, He wants justice.

That makes sense, and for the most part, it is the way we all live.

Jesus did say, however, “Do not resist an evil person.” What did He mean?

Jesus was responding to the old saying “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," i.e., "if someone strikes you in the eye, strike him in the eye.”

Exodus 21:24 "You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye and tooth for tooth.'. burn for burn, wound for wound, and stripe for stripe. fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. Just as he injured the other person, the same must be inflicted on him.

Leviticus 24:19-22 "And whoever causes an injury to a neighbor must receive the same kind of injury in return: Broken bone for broken bone, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. Anyone who injures another person must be injured in the same way in return."

Jesus is telling us to no longer respond in such a way on a personal level.

Romans 12:17 says, “Do not repay anyone evil for evil.” Romans 12:19 says: "Do not avenge yourselves, dear friends, but give place to God’s wrath, for it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. Verse 21 says, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

1st Peter 3:9 says, “Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with a blessing.”

1st Peter 3:11 "Turn away from evil and do good. Search for peace, and work to maintain it."

Thus, studying all verses in Scripture pertaining to the subject, He is not saying to let evil people get away with their evil deeds within our society. God wants peace, order, justice, and safety; to accomplish that we must deal justly with those who commit evil deeds (crimes) through our courts of law.

You can rest assured there was a purpose for the message you received that applied to your life. God, unlike humanity, does not invest in frivolous words.


“Be still, and know that I am God; / I will be exalted among the nations, / I will be exalted in the earth” is found in Psalm 46:10.

Christians often interpret the command to “be still” as “to be quiet in God’s presence.” While quietness is certainly desirable, the phrase means to stop frantic activity, to stand down, and to be still. For God’s people being “still” would involve looking to the Lord for His help (cf. Exodus 14:13); for God’s enemies, being “still” would mean ceasing to fight a battle they cannot win.

It is from a longer section of Scripture that proclaims the power and security of God. The threat the psalmist faced seems to relate to the pagan nations and a call for God to end the raging war:

“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.

"He says, ‘Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.’ The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.”

Though the psalm is written in the third person as the psalmist speaks about God, God’s voice comes through in verse 10, and the Lord speaks in the first person:

“Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”

"Be still." This is a call for those involved in the war to stop fighting, to be still. The word "still" is a translation of the Hebrew word rapa, meaning “to slacken, let down, or cease.” In some instances, the word carries the idea of “to drop, be weak, or faint.” It connotes two people fighting until someone separates them and makes them drop their weapons. It is only after the fighting has stopped that the warriors can acknowledge their trust in God.

In the spiritual battle taking place in today's world, being still, i.e., ceasing our human struggle, and "letting God" accomplish His purpose though us is more important than ever.

rumitoid

Thank you for a very erudite and in-depth post. You articulate your beliefs clearly. My objections to what you said may be misplaced, we may be saying the same thing but I have to put it in my own words.

It is "resist not evil." To resist evil is to entertain evil. We neither have the power nor understanding to resist evil. It has to be by spirit and grace. And how do we do that? We be still, meaning that we surrender our will and reason to the divine.

We do not rely on those things at all. No instinct for survival. No knowledge of good and evil to weigh or judge the situation. No morals or scruples. Total trust in the direction of spirit and grace. Stillness! Quiet of the soul's imperatives, ideas, yearnings, beliefs, and needs. An empty vessel. That is the essence of humility. The ultimate Little Child.

Humility is not directly an act of will, just as the innocence of a child is not an act of will, a considered option, but a state of being. The child does not ponder what is innocent or not, there is no effort or intent to be innocent, and if there was, innocence would be lacking. That is what purity means for the mature Christian.

To know we are nothing without God, to realize our need to rely on Him for all that we do, is wisdom, our eyes opened by grace. The actual surrender of our will—our total forgetfulness of self—is humility, and as such, just as with innocence, there are no degrees to humility.

Humility is the open door to the supra-personal, which draws forth intuition and Love, and allows for the full expression of who we are in essence as the image and likeness of God.

The right use of will is not by strength but weakness, not for power but for submission.

It seems humble to think of ourselves as less than God, saying, “He is great and I am small.”
This is not humility but beginner's wisdom. True humility is being of one spirit with God, realizing that we are the light of the world.
Maintaining this less and greater than comparison between us and God is immature.

To resist temptation: Through effort and striving, the way of ideals, there is no arriving at perfection. Perfection is only allowed through surrender, a simple "Yes, lord."

Humility is the only wealth, power, or death a child of God will ever know.

Humility is not the recognition of our smallness in a lowly comparison to God but the realization of our oneness in a loving companionship with God. It is that, not our resistance to evil, which Christ commanded.

Zemirah Loc: Sojourner En Route...

I was progressing through your response just swimmingly, rumi, then I ran into this Carl Jong phrased word "supra-personal." in your statement.

"Humility is the open door to the supra-personal, which draws forth intuition and Love, and allows for the full expression of who we are in essence as the image and likeness of God."

"Jung’s discovery of suprapersonal, spontaneous spiritual activity in the unconscious has changed the face of the world — the key note of human existence, as it were —, even if outwardly this change is barely noticeable at the present time," or so it is claimed by his followers...

Richard Noll is a clinical psychologist and historian of medicine at Harvard, who has written a compelling expose, called, "The Aryan Christ: The Secret Life of Carl Jung," resourced from letters and correspondences related to the Swiss psychoanalyst Jung, who wove the irrational sources of his occult syncretism into a Volkish cult of personality.

In Noll's account we rabbit trail along with Jung's strange mind from the beginnings of psychoanalyzing the institutionalized, to his accepting their "unconscious collective" fantasies as a path to spiritual rebirth, to acknowledgment by the world through the wealthy adepts (including John Rockefeller's daughter), who both funded and looked to Jung as a bringer of a counter cultural truth.

The ancient history of the esoteric and occultic sources of Jung's pseudo religion are documented, as are it's aim, which was to replace the establishment of the Judeo-Christian principles of the European reformation.

It's one thing to not be afraid of dying, but that is very different than not being afraid once you come to stand before Jesus on Judgment Day. "For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ." (2nd Cor. 5:10).

Believers will have peace on that final day because our sins have been forgiven "through faith in His blood." (Romans 3:25).

The door remains open today for anyone to come to Christ and be saved. Meanwhile, occultic psychology, which you quote, cannot assist your soul on Judgment Day. There is no power in psychology to forgive sins. Christian Biblically based Theology, on the other hand, teaches a person how to rely upon Christ alone for the forgiveness of sins and eternal life in God's Paradise.

I researched Carl Jung years ago, and found him to be a walking disciple of the ancient occultic gods of Mesopotamia, with demonic "spirit guides," so real to him, he drew their pictures on his walls, and sold his belief system to a gullible pubic as modern, "scientific" psychology.

Being more sophisticated than the average bumpkin (which I know you are) is one thing; mimicking a man who worshipped a rooster headed "god" named Abraxas" is quite another.

I pass.

For your soul's sake, research it for yourself.

I assure you, we are not saying the same thing.

rumitoid

Should have mentioned this before: "Resist not the evil one" is just an angle on the fundamental position of faith in Resist not evil.

rumitoid

I have a masters degree in clinical psychology and used to teach at the College of Santa Fe about the differences in views between him and Freud. Very familiar.

But the problem comes in not understanding how I am using supra-personal and how Jung defines it. I like the term because I feel it covers the effects and influence of Spirit and grace, which are supra-personal by what the Gospels declare. They are not under my control. They do not exist or act by my will. I feel the term supra-personal helps gives better clarity to explain the word of God. Sermons for millennia have attempted to do that. For me, God puts truth everywhere; grace alones let's us recognize it. It is not incorporating Jung into Christianity but realizing how Christ is approached but misrepresented by such as Jung.

Zemirah Loc: Sojourner En Route...

suprapersonal
Definition:

[adjective] Above or beyond what is personal

Have you read "Why Freud Fainted" by Samuel Rosenberg, 1978, Macmillan Publishing Co.? -
- why Sigmund Freud fainted in 1909 and 1912 ""in the presence of Carl Jung."" (No, it wasn't just a reaction to the trauma of being challenged by his beloved protege.)

Also, this was one of Freud's most intriguing quotes: "I am actually not at all a man of science, not an observer, not an experimenter, not a thinker. I am by temperament nothing but a conquistador [conqueror] — an adventurer, if you want it translated — with all the curiosity, daring, and tenacity characteristic of a man of this sort."

These two profoundly anti-Christian, anti-God charlatans each sought to give the masses a substitute for religion, and to a horrifying degree, at least in the Western world, they have succeeded.

Psychology, by always blaming something other than personal choice as responsible for mankind's dilemmas, has very effectively, in many instances succeeded in preventing them from seeking out a forgiving God, through Christ.

Is there peace between your head knowledge and spiritual quest, or a standing truce?

Zemirah Loc: Sojourner En Route...

rumi,

I did not in any way mean to imply that I question your Christian faith or your personal integrity.

We each, to a certain extent, even after conversion, march to the sound of "our own drummer," i.e., encompassing the interests to which God has pointed us, and the experiences He allows us, both profitable and otherwise, but for our development, as we are each born to be uniquely individual, and our idiosyncrasies will be used (though they often irritate others), ultimately to glorify Him.

May you keep on keeping on... in the path to which God directs you.