The philosophy of ancient Gnosticism perpetually reinvents itself. It’s the false religion that will not go away and that has come in many forms over the centuries. But it’s main tenant has not fundamentally changed. That tenant is this
Lie: We should keep quiet about conspiracy theories.
Truth: We should seek the truth and not be afraid to speak about anything, even so-called ‘conspiracy theories.’
To sin by silence, when we should protest / Makes cowards out of men. — Ella Wheeler Wilcox, from the first lines of her poem, Protest
Lie: I’m
responsible for my health.
Truth: What is
commonly called ‘our health’ is actually inseparable from our soul, which is integrally
dependent on God’s own life. So to be responsible for a health that is independent
of God, ignores the divine life intended to fill and power it.
It’s a common-enough assumption: ‘Hey, this is my body!’ After all, you may say, who else would it belong to? And furthermore, who else could do anything with it anyway? Yes, these are the bodies that we’ve been given, but that doesn’t mean they belong to us. We will one day leave this body — then whose body will it be?
We’ve all experienced it — that vague feeling of aimlessness, restlessness, perhaps in the late afternoon; in a word, the doldrums. We experience it as background noise, but don’t really know what it is. It’s an unpleasant feeling that we seek to either eliminate or mask with external stimuli. And the stimulus could be anything as long as it’s colorful, animated, rhythmic, funny or engrossing: TV, YouTube, mischief, porn, movies, games, books, food or all of the above. We’ll do anything to get rid of it.
Lie: I can safely ignore God.
Truth: I can ignore God, but not safely.
We’ve become good ignorers – those who’ve learned to ignore things extraordinarily well. It seems we’ve been forced to become so as a matter of survival, especially those of us crammed into cities, stacked in apartments, employed in corporate parks where 95% of the faces that continually pass us in the halls pass as strangers – we assiduously look down or away and without a drop of conscience.
And think of all the ads, the background music/Mazak, the SMS texts, the Instagram feeds to which we’ve frivolously subscribed, the robo-calls, the signs, the spam, the junk mail, the news and information – it never stops coming. To have any chance . . .
We usually think that joy and sorrow are mutually exclusive – you can’t have both at the same time. But that’s simply not true. In his second letter to the Corinthian church, which most regard as his most autobiographical, Paul says:
” . . as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold we live; as chastened, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing . . .”
Lie: Sleep is a waste.
Truth: Sleep is a rehearsal for death and resurrection.
It’s one of life’s most familiar daily routines but at the same time one of its greatest mysteries. It’s something we all do each night but something we could not avoid even if we tried. What am I talking about? It’s that phenomenon where we go involuntarily unconscious for hours, commonly known as: sleep.
Lie: Passive use of the Internet is harmless, part 3
Truth: Passive use of the Internet is participation in a system of systems designed to create a false and idolatrous reality.
In part 1 of this series, I described the data collection and control system and its components. I did that to give some context for part 2, which outlined the spiritual problem with this system. Now in this part 3, I’ll extend the outline of the problem in terms of how it appears to be rolling out, right under our noses. But before we get to that, let’s revisit a couple of things. What do I mean by ‘passive use?’
Lie: I cannot create anything unless I have an ideal solution.
Truth: Ideal solutions do not exist. We participate in God’s act of new creation by planting the seeds of words, deeds and of our own lives.
Well over ninety percent of our waking (and sleeping) lives are now lived in interior, engineered environments. The walls, ceilings, floors, windows, car interiors, appliances, furnishings and systems that surround us represent years, decades, centuries even, of designed perfection. But it was not always so.
Being constantly surrounded by this designed perfection obviously has its benefits, but it also has its down-sides. One of those down sides is the feeding of this lie: I cannot create anything unless I have the ideal solution. So let me . . .
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