My brain is an interesting place for sure. I've been considering what it is to either react or respond and what within my brain chooses one or the other of those two choices.
It was very enlightening when I first read somewhere that if I speak to another person such that I illicit a response the conversation will be different than if I speak in such a way that I illicit a reaction.
That knowledge right there gave me wonderful freedom in knowing how to effectively promote a useful conversation.
For example, someone could say to me; "Why did you plant that bizarre, twisty shaped
shrub in your garden?" Or they could say; "Hmm, that is certainly an interesting choice of bush to put in front of your house."
In my brain the first comment heads me right to a reaction. "What do you mean "bizarre?" Why are you picking on me? You obviously have bad taste if you don't see this choice of shrub as being a good choice." And on and on it would go. My ego is activated and I defend and react and attack in return.
With the second comment I am invited into a conversation. I don't have to tamp down and restrain my injured ego, I can just explain what and how I was thinking when I choose that shrub and that spot.
This has a lot to do with the human brain's gift of fight or flight. How do you think that is so? And why?
"Once you label me you negate me."
Søren Kierkegaard
Exactly. I just become a semiotic device in your thinking. All that I am becomes merely a sign within your thinking. In your interaction with me actually you will not be interacting with me, you will be interacting not with the full me but the symbol that I now am for you.
This is exactly why Peter Rollins, the author of How (Not) to Speak of God, talks about adopting atheism for lent. To allow for the sign that God may have become in my mind to be replaced by the living and active presence of God.
Signs certainly have many purposes but you can never have a dynamic relationship with a sign. It merely points to something.
Anytime a human or a being becomes a sign for me, at that point the life is drained out of them and they have become a marker for what they represent in my mind.
Which needless to say minimizes or shuts down any the beauty of the interaction with a human being because the interaction is with a semiotic device in my brain.
What signs might you become in my mind? Old human, young human, smart human, crazy human, black human, white human, male human, female, intellectual, uneducated, pretty, engineer, day laborer,... you get the point.
Love means I care enough to notice when I am assigning (good word here ;~) a place holder or sign in place of the living and dynamic reality that is you.
We all do it, it's the way the brain functions. Our brains always seem to want to assign meaning to what we see and conceptualize "what it is."
Signs and labels kills the person and closes the latches on a small box with a rounded top and gilded hinges.
Love creates an opening of an unknown size where the other person can become fully alive in the relationship and actually according to Carl Rodgers the aliveness enabled can show up in every part of the person's life.
"The mark of Christianity is the paradox, the absolute paradox. As soon as a so called speculative cancels the paradox and makes this qualification into an element, all the spheres are confused."
~Søren Kierkegaard
Personally have come from a background of dependence on knowing and being secure in that knowledge, I now much more appreciate not knowing.
And truly when exploring what it is to be in relationship with the creator of the Cosmos would mystery and a freedom to explore that mystery be the best and more rich place to find even more of an expression of who God is?
And if God's primary purpose is to be relational what is more mysterious than a relationship? I could try to be funny and talk about understanding the mind of a woman but truly we each are mysterious within us and thus we are mysterious in how we show up in life.
That is why NOTHING is gained by holding a person in a box, thus much less holding God in a box.
Love is not love unless it is an openness within the mind for the other; God or my wife, or my friend or the Democrat or the Republican or whomever.
Fear creates fences, love sees no fences.
"For the first few centuries after Christ the church tended towards believing everyone would be united with God in the end. Then the doctrine of Hell gained prominence.
So, let's see if I read this correctly - closer to Jesus we were more loving and inclusive, once man had time to make his own influence felt things started going to Hell."
David Mclaughlan
I wonder if this switch David is speaking of, had anything to do with the church becoming a political/cultural institution under Constantinople. Certainly force and power and control entered the picture then.
It seems obvious that to force someone to become a Christian completely and effectively bypasses the inner spirituality of a relationship with God.
Hell replacing God's love is pure and simple what happened. Makes you want to cozy right up!!
I am so bold as to think that the fox took over the henhouse a few hundred years ago and corrupted what a relationship with God was meant to be. The same human propensity still affects the church today, using force, control and manipulation through proper thinking and proper action to not enjoy a deep seated inner peace with God but to avoid punishment.
No wonder the church has not affected and deeply transformed the culture. It's not just a perversion to lead people to God through fear and intimidation, it doesn't work well!!
