Many wonder how we are controlled by invisible forces. No, I’m not talking about corrupt governments or others using remote controls, but how thoughts from another, maybe the invisible realm, influence us human beings.
The mind has the capacity to
interpolate; that is to take minimal information and expand upon it. For
instance, the phrase “God is love” is mind expanding. Somehow our minds take
that one phrase and add to it other things from the body of knowledge already
stored in the brain.
The Words of Jesus did that for
me: “…about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eli, Eli,
lama sabachthani?’ that is to say, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me?’” (Mat 27:46). The Aramaic in that cry is confusing. It did nothing to
stimulate my brain because Aramaic is just gibberish to me that is confusing.
My brain does very little with that information; it is only perplexing. If I
had heard the cry in my own ears, information would be added to that. My mind
could have filled in the missing pieces.
What was missing? Agony, a
feeling of aloneness, pain. If we had heard that cry, then our minds would have
interpolated the meaning of those words, expanded upon them, and provided to us
many details of what those words meant.
For the convenience of the Greek-speaking
world, Matthew translated the Aramaic to the Greek so that the Greeks
understood the agony of Jesus. Then translators, took the Greek and put those
words in English, so that the English-speaking people would interpolate less strenuously.
My point is that people, hearing
or reading a few words, fill in the blank. Their minds expand on just a little
information and make conclusions about it. That is “cognition.”
A recent study has found that to
be true. The better we listen, the more efficient our brain becomes in
understanding. The study showed that just a few words, when expanded upon by
the mind, can tell a whole story from information already stored within the
brain.
The Jews would have taken the
Aramaic and did something with it. Their minds, knowing scripture, would have
filled-in much missing information. What was missing to “My God, my God, why
has thou forsaken me?” They would have recalled Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words
of my roaring?” (Psalm 22:1). They would have understood that God did not seem
to be helping Jesus and that He ignored the loud cry. You see, much information
is gleaned from just a few words, but that is just the first line of the psalm.
Books could be written about the
first few verses of that psalm. However, examine this one passage, “But I am a
worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people” (Psalm 22:6).
Your mind should be asking, if
you are focused on reading, Why did Jesus see Himself as a worm? Then
your mind, subject to your sub-conscience, would begin to wonder why Jesus might
see Himself as a worm! In your mind, you would see a worm and perhaps it even
crawling. If you thought even more, you might see a snake, or even the Serpent
of old.
Of course, based on things stored
in your mind, it should reject the notion that Jesus was inferring that He was
the Serpent that beguiled Adam’s kind. Your mind wanders around searching for
more meaning and it happens so fast that you are unaware of it. If you had to
tell your thoughts where to lead you, then your thought processes would be so
slow that you would have very little intelligence. Hence, the speed and
expansion of thoughts must have something to do with intelligence; and wisdom
is the process of using thoughts for good. There is so much going on in your
mind of which you are not even aware. From where do those thoughts come?
How the brain functions is a mystery, but science studies it with modern instrumentation. They can measure what is going on in the brain using new technology to wire, scan, and measure brain activity. A new study was just published; below is an excerpt:
The researchers
uncovered two key findings. First, brain activity was more informative and
compressible when participants engaged in the more demanding task of listening
to a coherent story compared to the scrambled story or resting conditions. This
suggests that during higher-level cognitive tasks, the brain produces detailed,
information-rich activity that is also organized efficiently. In simpler tasks,
or during rest, the brain’s activity is less organized and contains less
specific information.
The two points are: effective
listening and well-organized presentation. To understand God requires effective
presentation and attention to the presentation.
That Jesus is the “Word” of God
is significant; every Word in the Bible is God-breathed in that it is inspired
within you from God. If you read the Word from the Bible, it is as if it came
from the mouth of God. Once read, then your responsibility is to interpolate it;
you are to consider God and come to conclusions. It is your responsibility to
remain sober — both seeking the truth and without narcotic interference.
Information not only comes from
reading but actions. Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth?” (John 18:38). Jesus
did not answer directly. He demonstrated what is truth!
Pilate seems to have been a
student of Plato, the philosopher, who wrote many things to answer What is
truth?
Jesus was “chained” (nailed
still) in the manner of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. In that allegory, the men
were chained in a cave so that they could not see the objects (people and all
types of movement behind them). However, they could see the shadows, and their
minds would fill in the blanks — that there must be objects (people) in motion
behind them who cast the shadows. For them, the shadows became a fragment of the
object. They saw the motion and shadow and their minds filled in the blank that
there were dynamic objects that cast them. [1]
Their minds took whatever little
information that was available and created a more complete reality. Our minds
do that all the time.
For instance, when I see a silhouette
of Alfred Hitchcock many, many things run through my mind. I take that one
piece of information and expand upon it. I could write pages of memories from
that one bit of information. My mind, with no effort on my part, takes that one
thing and creates many pictures in my mind… and in just a nano-second. (In the
Greek, “thought-work” is katergomai — working out by thoughts, your
salvation.)
The better and faster we can do
that the higher the intelligence and wisdom.
Memory comes into play. I have
read the 22nd Psalm many times, so the more I read it, the easier it
is for my mind to find it. Under the right conditions, the mind can dig up
information that was stored in the now dusty files of the mind. Sometimes stroke
patients, it is said, can recall those long-gone memories easier than the
present. The mind, indeed, is a beautiful thing. What if we had to keep track of
where and when that information lies?
Now enter confusion. “When we
stop being engaged, or when we think more ‘shallowly’ about what we are doing,
our brains switch into a much less efficient mode, where the activity patterns
become less structured, less informative, and more idiosyncratic” (ibid).
Christians as well as anybody
must stay engaged with the Word of God and everybody must think less shallowly.
It has come to the point that even Christians take sayings like “God is good,”
and “God is light” and it ends there. They become passive and apathetic. Their
minds do not ask any questions; it is as if some thing out there shuts
off their neurological processes.
For those without inquiring
minds, they don’t care how God is light, or that God is good. They do not even
consider what is truth, nor from whom their thoughts come! Their minds are
right where Satan wants them to be — dead!
Paul wrote to Peter, “Be sober,
be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh
about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Pet 5:8). Sobriety is the ability to
process information, and vigilance is evaluating what information you are
either consuming or glossing over. The outcome of inefficient cognition (mental
processes) is that some entity that you cannot see, nor even believe in, might devour
you. That is not a physical process but to outwit, outplay, and outlast you. How
can that be done? By limiting the good things that you take in and confusing
your minds by scrambling your cognition.
Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, “Prove
all things; hold fast that which is good” (1 Thes 5:21). All things must be
considered. Information must be available and enter the minds of the people.
The best way to short-circuit good things is for frivolous things to enter your
mind.
Entertainment does just that. All
entertainment from all media sources contains messages, albeit your conscience mind
may not comprehend the messages, your subconscious understands. Unaware to you,
you are considering (cognition) all that enters your minds and hanging on to
whatever messages that are sent. Whatever it is that you take in becomes “you.”
Lucifer — the Devil Satan — is “Prince of the Power of the Air” (Ephes 2:2). He
is the source of the things of the world that occupy your minds. You are under
control; you are mastered whether you know it or not!
Because Satan is not omnipresent
nor omniscient, he gets into you by other devices to control on whom and what
we think, to wit: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my
ways, saith the Lord” (Isa 55:8). Most people do not think and behave in the
manner of God (Jesus — “The Word”) because their minds are occupied on other
things.
I do a Bible study most days. I
take in some small degree of information, but all day long I consider the Word
of God. With even a small amount of the Word, I am safe from the distractions
of the Wicked One all day long. I take that small amount of information,
consider it, and it grows in my mind. While the Word of God is growing, the
distractions of the Devil are filed deeply in the recesses of my mind. That is
both theology and the science!
When I see the cross, that one
piece of information enters my mind. Within my mind, I see Jesus, I see His
agony, and I see that He propitiated His own blood for mine. Sometimes in my
mind’s eye, when I see only the cross, I see just truth. I see that Jesus is
nailed still yet His Shadow moves and even leaves Him. I see Him overcoming the
science — reality in the world wherein shadows are stuck permanently to their
objects. While I am thinking of those
things, the thoughts of the Devil may still be in there but are now forgotten
until Satan incites me to recall them. He did that to Lot’s wife who looked
back at the pleasure of sin (Gen 19:26) and he can do it to me.
When I see people plugged into
their smartphones or wearing earbuds, it worries me. Not when they do so
occasionally, but when they shut the thoughts of God out and allow the world in
continually. Unless they are listening to Christian things, they are shutting
God out. When I say anything to such a person, all that I receive is generally
only a blank stare. Their minds are occupied on what they are hearing from some
tower, maybe from the mind of the Prince of the Power of the Air. They are
mastered because they are doing so many things that he desires for them to do!
In the PsyPost study (mentioned
above) the cognitive dynamics of the mind are less efficient when the message
is scrambled. Narratives are the scrambling process. A “narrative” is spreading
information most often to the benefit of the people speaking. It may not be the
truth, or it could be.
As Aldous Huxley wrote in the
book, Brave New World, “sixty-four thousand four-hundred repetitions
make one truth.” If it is repeated often enough, people come to believe it. That
is what Jonathan Gruber meant about the acceptance of Obamacare, “We depended
on the stupidity of the American voter.” It is not that voters are stupid, but
they are shallow thinkers. They fail to understand that free things for others
means much sacrifice from themselves. The promise of free things scrambles their
thoughts, and they accept them as good, not because of stupidity, but they
are inefficient thinkers!
So many Christians think inefficiently.
They have been conditioned to take the information without questioning. I get mostly
blank stares when I ask people what Christian sayings mean. People say they are
“saved.” When I question how so, it is usually blank stares or avoidance that
is returned. About any hard question that I ask just confuses people!
I asked one minister with a
doctorate in theology from Chicago Theological Seminary, “What is
glorification?” His puzzled and only response was “Well, glorification!? He had
apparently had never even thought about it before.
Words mean things. That is
my mantra. The Word of God means awesome things, both scary and magnificent. I
mentioned the other day at church how awesome God is. So, awesome that I wrote an
entire book about His awesomeness. No interest… only blank stares as if nobody
cares.
They can sing about “My God is an
Awesome God” but are very limited in their knowledge about how awesome God is.
They care that God is awesome, but how so is too much for them to think about.
Many are too busy with the performance to worry about the substance of the
message.
Satan himself is lazy but not
apathetic. He sincerely wants to undermine God, and he does that by your
thoughts; the reason that your thoughts are not the thoughts of God. He
occupies your mind, not necessarily by criticizing God, but for you to be
apathetic to the things of God; for you to shut off that inquiring mind. Temptation
does just that. It is not that we have to sin to undermine God, but to be distracted
from Him with sins of omission — all those times that we neglect God.
How to have us neglect God
(apathy… blank stares)? By staying occupied with distractions. Many times, I
head toward my recliner to study my Bible, but on the way even to the other
room, he will direct my attention to some “shiny object” as he did to Eve. This
morning, the “shiny object” was reading recent scientific discoveries about the
mind that interested me.
Well, God does shield me. I read
the article about critical thinking and that sparked a reaction just as they
wrote. I was supposed to think about their discovery and my own mind, but then
God stepped into my thoughts. He revealed to me; That is how I work in you.”
With that one thought, what I have written today is how God expanded on that in
my mind, just as the author wrote in his article.
The points I made were an
expansion of what they wrote. My mind turned from their discovery to God’s
application: to “take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit,
which is the Word of God” (Ephes 6:17).
The helmet shields the brain from
penetration by malevolent sources. The mind resides, at least in this world, in
the brain. The Word does not shield the brain in this case, but the mind. They
are words inspired by God — His Thoughts that are not our thoughts. Our thoughts
are not even our thoughts! We take information from the world that is meant to persuade
us of something that may be true or not. The mind, if it has not been subject
to tampering, sorts out all the things and retains what is good. All those
external things are to scramble our thoughts not to do good.
Adam’s woman did that. She took
in both good and evil, and was beguiled, heeding only the evil things to do. The
serpent beguiled her. He interfered with her rational way of thinking that was
designed to be “very good” (Gen 1:31).
In a manner, once exposed to
evil; always exposed to evil… unless the Word in Person or Thoughts shield your
minds.
I did test all things this
morning and hung onto what is good; I should beware of what and whom control my
thoughts.
[1] The action, or Dynamics,
of God was Him departing the body of the Person, Jesus. Jesus was giving up Virtue
to engender mankind with His Genome. Jesus
is the objective Image of God, and the Holy Ghost that went out from Him, His “Shadow,”
Phantom, or Holy Ghost. (That is how my mind interpolates the crucifixion and
the cross.)
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