Whether evil is rational or irrational rests solely within the perpetrator’s mind
The Past Sure is Tense
The past sure is tense, They’re heading up for the main event, All those people seem to be hell-bent…No you got the wrong idea, No you got the wrong intent…The past sure is now, I don’t see how… Don Van Vliet
Let us revisit the time of Abraham and dissect a story within the story. When Abraham and his nephew Lot settled in Canaan, (modern day Israel), their wealth and possessions grew so vast that they had to move a distance from each other to make room for them. Lot and his family moved to the city of Sodom (Gn. 13:1 – 13.).
Sodom and Gomorrah were cities thought to be near the Dead Sea. Except for Lot and his family, both cities were filled with unrepentant, sinful reprobates. Thus, God’s hand was forced to render His righteous judgment, in the form of total destruction of the cities and their inhabitants (Gn. 18:20, 21.).
However, God sent two angels (who appeared to be men), to Sodom, to deliver Lot. Lot encountered them in the town square and invited them to his house. Lot’s house was then immediately surrounded by all the men in Sodom, who told Lot to give the men up, so that they could force anal rape upon them (Gn. 19:1 – 5.).
The angels struck all the townsmen with blindness, (which undoubtedly revealed their nature to Lot). Then they told Lot to take his family (wife, 2 daughters and 2 sons-in-law) and run from Sodom immediately:
“Escape for your life! Do not look behind you nor stay anywhere in the plain. Escape to the mountains, lest you be destroyed.” Gn. 19:17 NKJV
Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by the angels, who called down fire and brimstone upon them (Gn. 19:24). Lot and His family made their escape, but Lot’s wife turned around for one last look at the life that she left behind:
But his wife looked back behind him, and she became a pillar of salt. Gn. 19:26 NKJV
A hard and poignant lesson. So much so, that Jesus used this event as a warning example for those who were not prepared to leave their worldly life behind for Him when He returns:
On that day, the one who is on the housetop and whose goods are in the house must not go down to take them out; and likewise the one who is in the field must not turn back. Remember Lot’s wife. Lk. 17:31, 32. NASB
When God presents you with His will for you, He expects you to act it out, instead of staying entrenched in the world:
“No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back [to the things left behind] is fit for the kingdom of God.” Lk. 9:62 AMP
It is about letting go of your past ways of thinking and acting. But releasing the past is not easy for anyone. So, let us discuss why that is, and then the title of this post and the verse underneath it will begin to make sense…
See my previous post Evolution of the Dark Mind for greater detail of the recap of it that I present here, which outlines how the devil-induced ego creates people who are trapped in their past. That lying voice in your head leads you down to a dark place where you come to believe you are inherently flawed. Not true.
In subsequent shame, you isolate yourself from yourself, others and even from God Himself.
Your life mirrors what is going on in your head, which is a whirl of frenetic thoughts that keep you running from reality. You wear yourself out and become violent.
The violence stems from your resistance against the world as you see it. In addition, you take on the role of a victim to relieve you from having to take responsibility for your life…
Okay. Let us press on. What we end up doing is living in suspended animation – in frozen time. That relentless mental chatter steals our present moments, by continually pummeling us with cerebral visions of our distorted Life Story, so that we cannot engage with the ‘now.’ We chase our own tails, reliving our past relentlessly, giving it a little more drama with each review.
That nasty little ego not only uses the past against us, it also dangles the hope of a better future in front of us – again, to keep us away from experiencing the present moment.
The only place that we can experience God is in present time.
Your only real and ongoing sin, is living in suffering and throwing your precious life away. Christ has already paid the price for the forgiveness of any transgression in your past and He is willing to help you retrieve your present:
“Do not call to mind the former things, or ponder the things of the past. Behold, I will do something new, now it will spring forth… Is. 43:18, 19. NKJV
“I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake; and I will not remember your sins.” Is. 43:25 NKJV
For His sake. God wants to cherish you. He never intended for you to live a burdensome life, trapped in some illusory past. He knows that when you put your mind in front of your eyes, you can only show Him your back.
You know when you have chosen your past over God. It is revealed in your self-talk: ‘If only I would have done___.’ ‘If only I would have married___.’ ‘If only I wasn’t so___.’ ‘If only my parents weren’t so___.’ ‘If only, if only, if only…’
It is a conversation composed of a string of regrets – a flurry of thoughts telling you that you, someone else, or something else must change for you to be happy. And you run a similar narrative when you are daydreaming about the future: ‘If only I could be taller, richer, etc.’
What happens when you keep these conversations going in your head? Nothing happens! Life is only lived in the present moment. The Dark Mind doesn’t want you in present time because that represents change – an unpredictable sequence that it cannot control.
So, it keeps presenting your world as an ongoing stream of past events, all the while warning you, ‘What if this happens again?’ In other words, ego preserves its relevance by keeping you believing that your worst nightmare is lurking just around the corner.
And so, life never seems to be what we think it should be. We lay it out like a map, which we hope that if we live by it, those directions will keep out the pain of our past. But that ultimately keeps our focus on the very same pain. Instead of seeking God to help us ferret out the roots of our dissatisfaction with life, we change jobs, relationships, geography, or we immerse ourselves in meaningless distractions – remaining the author of our own vexation.
Amazingly, many will choose to suffer and keep their sad life because that is what they know, as well as the person they must be to live it. But that life continues to worsen, because the past is bottomless due to the continual embellishments that they add to their Life Story. It gives ego new nuances to beat them up with.
This is not living; it is dying unconsciously. We want to avoid that because the past sure is tense. We don’t want our past to be our ‘now.’ We want to keep it in past tense.
No one makes the conscious decision to be wounded. However, if we cling to that past, those wounds will continue to fester. Whatever happened in your past may or may not be your fault. The events may or may not have happened in the way that you remember them.
WHATEVER HAPPENED, IT DOESN’T MATTER! WHAT MATTERS IS THAT YOU LEARN FROM THEM AND MOVE ON.
You cannot get that time back, or undo what has transpired. Your responsibility is to let it go! It is time to seek God and let Him wake you up from your suspended animation, and fit you with a new timepiece:
But as for me, I trust in You O LORD; I say, “You are my God,” my times are in your hand… Ps. 31:14, 15. NKJV
…call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, says the LORD, and I will bring you back from your captivity… Jer. 29:12 – 14. NKJV
Amen.
Goodnight and God bless.
Evolution of the Dark Mind
Previously, we looked at how a child (along with a little help from the devil) creates a mental construct called ‘ego,’ (see What Are We Teaching Our Children?), that is supposed to remind them how to conform to the ways of the world, so as to not stand out as some oddball that might be considered unacceptable or unlovable.
Subsequently, life becomes more about survival than living. The voice of ego starts out in a manner that seems protective, but then it takes a dark turn. It begins to remind the child of its imaginary flaws, so that he or she feels they must obey this voice, in order to survive a supposedly dangerous world. Worse, they begin to identify with that voice as their own – forgetting that they created this ego.
You too were a child. There is a distinct possibility that some ego is living in you. Do not blame yourself. You were too young to know what was happening and could not have known how to protect yourself if you did.
This ego, a ‘Dark Mind,’ if you will, is always assaulting the miraculous mind that God gave you – contaminating it with lies that act as filters, which distort your consciousness, altering the meanings of all the incoming information to your brain. The Dark Mind is not your real mind. It works within it but exists outside of it. It only exists because of your faith in its reality and your assumption that it is your protector.
If you allow your Dark Mind to thrive, your soul goes into hibernation. And now, you’ve unconsciously broken God’s first of the Ten Commandments:
You shall have no other gods before or besides Me. Ex. 20:3 AMP
This is the ultimate Dark Mind strategy: It tells you that you are flawed so that you begin to condemn yourself. Then, it informs you that you need to hide those flaws (that you don’t really have), to avoid rejection. Furthermore, it shows you ways to fix those ‘bad parts,’ by giving you tasks to perform, that do not work. Why? Because you cannot fix a problem that does not exist!
The outcome is that you keep running blindly on a mission with no chance of success. The Dark Mind loves this, because you keep yourself in an anxiety-ridden state, to frantically try to manage your life – all the while plagued by thoughts of ‘Will this make me lovable?’ ‘Am I doing the right thing?’ ‘Will this make me acceptable?’ ‘Will this hide my bad parts?’ ‘What will others think of me?’
In other words, you make yourself suffer. You will find yourself drained of mental energy, suffering from confusion, losing yourself in daydreams and punishing yourself with criticisms over your illusory defects. That is how the Dark Mind keeps you from pursuing your hopes and dreams.
In this state, you are separated from God – either out of ignorance, or, by forgetting that God is always willing to help:
The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Phil. 4:5 – 7. ESV
Moreover, that voice in your head is not content with corrupting your present-time concerns, it will also reach inside your memories – making them bigger, darker, and more shameful. It weaves a tale of what it declares is your history (your Life Story), and then relentlessly beats you up with it, calling you a ‘loser.’
It tells you that you had a terrible life, that you were to blame, and that nobody understands what you went through except it. Equally as bad, the Dark Mind tells you that your future will look the same. More lies. But what does God say?
‘For I know the plans and thoughts that I have for you,’ says the Lord, ‘plans for peace and well being and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.’ Jer. 29:11 AMP
However, instead of relying on God’s promise, most of us run with our Life Story, dragging it around like a ball and chain, blaming every disagreeable circumstance on it.
Life is found wanting; and you wait for something or someone to bring you happiness. Moreover, even if you should find a scrap of happiness, that mental parasite will say, ‘This isn’t it;’ ‘You’re not quite there;’ or, ‘This will never last.’
Here’s the bottom line: we make up this malevolent voice in our head, (suggested by and infused with the spirit of the Dark Mind), that bleats out, ‘The world sucks!’ ‘Other people suck!’ and ‘We suck!’ It keeps us in a perpetual state of emergency, so that we cannot stop and see what is real…
God could superimpose His voice at any time, but He will not violate your free-will choice to listen to that voice in your head. Also, when you are so busy trying to survive on your own, you can’t hear His voice.
But we cannot look to darkness for clarity. Yet, we do, and so we suffer, which serves no purpose, when that suffering is created by our own thoughts. That type of anguish has nothing to teach us.
Most of our suffering comes from being attached to the ego’s false embellishment of our past – which is our Life Story about the upset, unhealed child within, who is lonely, scared and feeling unaccepted. Worse, we are wasting our lives trying to fix that child’s non-existent problems. They are in the past after all.
Suffering, in other words, is a result of not accepting our true selves, or the reality of the world around us. Instead, we cling to our illusions. God warns us of this very thing:
…if sinners entice you, do not consent. Pr. 1:10 NKJV
That voice in your head is the sinner of the worst kind, because it was fashioned by the author of sin. You are in a situation that you cannot fix by yourself; but you’ve got all the help that you need:
You came near when I called you; you said, ‘Do not fear!’ You have taken up my cause, O Lord; you have redeemed my life. Lam. 3:57, 58. ESV
However, if you don’t reach out for God, how will your life look if you are infested with this Dark Mind?
It becomes one that is lived in fear of false threats, animated by knee-jerk reactions of self-defense. And you avoid any challenges in life that you have perceived to have a potential to trigger past suffering – stunting your growth and keeping people at bay. Thus, your ‘now’ and your ‘tomorrow’ become self-fulfilling prophecies of your ‘yesterdays:’
For as he thinks within himself, so he is. Pr. 23:7 NASB
Stuff happened to us in life. We, (with a little Dark help), made a decision about the event or about ourselves; and it altered the way that we felt about ourselves, others, or about life itself – and our lives changed as a result.
I was not immune to this dismal cycle. At the tender age of seven, I got into a front yard brawl with the neighbor boy. He had me pinned to the ground when my father drove up after work. He took one look and walked into the house. Dad thought that was the right thing to do to toughen me up.
I decided that he didn’t love me, and it altered our relationship until the day he died. I extrapolated my computation to include an assumption that if the person I loved the most didn’t love me, then I must be inherently flawed. And I suffered for decades – all due to a single misunderstanding.
Whatever any of us chose to do in the past under stress, we did it because we were afraid. I was scared to ask my father if he loved me; I was frightened that he just might say ‘no.’
No one deserves condemnation for being afraid; but it is our responsibility to get past our fears, by invalidating their roots, so that we can be free of our reactionary responses. This is vital because the lies we’ve woven around events and people are far more damaging than the reality that we have distorted…
You might say to yourself, ‘Well, that certainly wasn’t very uplifting.’ It wasn’t meant to be. It is intended to put you on notice that God cherishes you, but He cannot connect His love to you, as long as you are tethered to the devil. And everyone is, at one occasion or another. Throughout time, Satan has stolen just about everyone’s soul. Whether that theft is temporary or eternal, is entirely up to you.
The devil’s strategy is to break up God’s intended hierarchical relationship between spirt, soul and flesh – where the spirit is to rule over the soul and the soul over the flesh. He distorts your soul with lies until you lose all memory of your Jehovah-instilled innate goodness. Then, the soul does the adversary’s bidding, yielding to the desires of the flesh that run counter to your spiritual direction from God.
A death spiral begins:
“The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy.” Jn. 10:10 NKJV
Satan takes his agenda most seriously. He lives to hurt God. The only way that he can do that, is by stealing His children from Him. The devil teaches his victims to rebel.
As we continue on our spiritual journey, we are going to dissect his strategies and enlist the Creator of the universe to defeat and defang him. And you will remain in the space where God can connect His love to you for all time…
The Son of God was revealed for this purpose: to destroy the devil’s works. 1 Jn. 3:8 CSB
Goodnight and God bless.