Locked up tight

For some reason, God just ain’t letting me finish up my rant about misuse of speaking in tongues just now. Ever since my post on April 8, I keep getting ready to sit down and address and refute some of the crazy and erroneous stuff I’ve found in researching the topic, but the Holy Spirit keeps popping some other idea into my head instead of that. Once again, maybe tomorrow.

Instead, I have a topic inspired by a post on religion over at The Field Negro. There’s a lot of good stuff not only in the post itself by especially in the comments, which are coming from a wide range of believers, agnostics and atheists. (One person even echoed my assertion on March 28 that atheism itself is a religion—boy I could have used him or her around here back then for backup. 😉 Ah, well.)

What Field’s post got me thinking about was why we close ourselves off to God so often in this world. Note, I said we. I did it before I became born again by ignoring Jesus and treating God like an afterthought. And even though I’m secure in my soul’s salvation now, I still close myself off at times by not going in the directions God sometimes nudges me. Hell, if I had paid more attention to what God wanted of me, I would have started this blog a year or two ago (at least) instead of only being in my third month of this.

We humans do a really good job of locking our spiritual side up. Sure, lots of people say “I’m spiritual,” but it’s just talk in most cases. As humans, we’re full of a whole heaping load of bullshit, and we sling it so well that we convince ourselves we really mean it. But most people aren’t spiritual at all—or aren’t nearly as spiritual as they need to be.

Why is that? Why do we shove our spirits, our souls, into a vault and slam the door? Why won’t we let someone like God inside? Why won’t we even open the vault door more than a crack every once in a while to see for ourselves what’s going on in there?

Because we’re afraid.

We’re afraid of what we’ll find if we explore our spiritual side too much. We’re afraid of what might have to change in our lives, not the least of which is how we view what we do and whether we can do it with a clean conscience anymore. We’re also afraid of what we might have to give up, never considering how much more we might gain in the process. We’re afraid of being held accountable. Of having expectations placed upon us.

It’s like the way we sometimes lock up our hearts. But our hearts are too deeply intertwined with our hormones to be kept locked up. For the vast majority of people, the heart cannot be caged. It is the ultimate jailbreaker. It’s the master safecracker. No lock can keep it back and no cell can hold it. At least not forever.

But the spirit…the soul…that’s another matter entirely. We can lock it up tight and ignore it. It’s the ultimate power of choice—of free will—that God gave to us. He lets us make the choice of whether to lock up our souls and possibly pay a horrendous price, or unlock the door and free our spiritual side. He also gives us the choice to take spiritual paths that are not good for us. And that is the tricky part of faith—accepting that there is something more than just the physical world but also acknowledging that not all faiths are correct. They can’t be. Some are in direct conflict and not all of them address what is wrong in humans and how (and why) it needs to be fixed. And so even in opening the door there is confusion, uncertainty and fear.

But much like love—no, more so—we need that uncomfortable period. Just as love can sometimes get messy before it becomes something deep and meaningful, so too is our soul’s journey something very heavy indeed. It is no small task to open the vault, and no small task to do what we need to with our spiritual side once we unfetter it.

Is anything worth doing easy though? I have yet to see anything of true value be easy. And nothing is more valuable than our souls and our salvation.

2 thoughts on “Locked up tight

  1. mystdancer50

    I find your take on things interesting. You definitely do express a great deal of truth in your blogs. I find that I don’t quite care for the foul language, however, but you do use it less than other blogs so I guess it can be overlooked. Some things in our lives are not addressed by God instantly and other things are. That’s just the way He is. It is hard, sometimes, to truly walk in the spirit. Especially since God doesn’t pull us out of the world and lock us away somewhere when we get saved. Traversing the world daily can bring out many things of the old nature. One thing I’ve discovered is that I can hear God a lot clearer these days than I use to hear Him. I know what He wants and I am moving ever closer to the place where I do as He asks without hesitation or hinderance. I liked this blog. Cheers!

    Reply
  2. Deacon Blue

    I think one of the worst things churches (Christian, that is) do sometimes is to focus on just the good parts of being in God’s grace and totally glossing over the challenges therein. It really puts a lot of new believers in a bad situation when they have stuff happening and wonder, “Why isn’t God protecting me?” I guess if our days before taking God’s path are childhood, much of our time during the faith walk is adolescence (and all the chaotic feelings that go with it)…I’m not sure very many of us truly get mature though. But I like to think that most of us leave that adolescent phase though. 😉

    And I agree with your hearing God more clearly statement. The more I do this blog, the more I feel like I’m listening more to Him and not always just to my own wants. It’s a good feeling. Wish I was better at doing it all the time.

    Reply

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