Still reading? Very well.
In response to Moses' question about who he is, God replies, "I am that I am" - a Being that exists totally from its own resources.
To understand this iota of fact about the nature of God's existence, we must have an understanding of what it means to exist. What does it mean for us to exist as humans?
According to French philosopher Descartes, we think therefore we are, but I posit that this in itself is not enough to warrant our existence as humans. A clock or computer could be programmed to run the same thought over and over, while containing no will to act whatsoever.
Every human being has a will. It is our inclination and capacity to act on our own and to produce what we find to be good. Because we have will we are not things. Without will we would have no life that is recognizably human.
As mentioned in earlier writings, part of being human is have dominion over some area of our lives. You can refer to this as free will or choice or whatever suits your fancy. The fact of the matter is, without the ability to make a decision and exert our influence into life, we are not, and cannot be defined as, human.
Why is this important? And why is this important to understanding God, which is the main focus of this chapter?
The heart, or will, simply is spirit in human beings, and it is the only thing in us that God will accept as the basis of our relationship to him.
Because we can understand our own will, to some extent we can understand God's. God is the own being who exists by continuing to will himself into existence from moment to moment. We cannot do that, no matter how hard we try. Once we exist, we can do a great many things with our wills, one of which is relate to our God and creator. In the classical tradition, this is the meaning of the term "spirit".
Our spirits are central to our selves because, as I just argued, in a sense we are our spirits. That is to say, we cannot be human without them.
Because we are spiritual beings, it is for our good to live our lives in interactive dependence upon God and under his kingdom rule.
This may not seem like a logical next step, and in all fairness it is not, based solely on my short posting; however the book does a fair job of showing why, if we are not solely physical, but rather spiritual beings, we should need to survive by interacting with other spiritual beings in a spiritual world.
We ought to be spiritual in every aspect of our lives because our world is the spiritual one. Thus Paul warns us, "To fill your mind with the visible, the 'flesh', is death, but to fill your mind with the spirit is life and peace." (Rom 8:6)
Your agreement with this statement will greatly depend on your agreement with the last three chapters of this book. For instance, you might spend hours debating whether God exists, whether Jesus' words were true, or whether such statements are fact or mere recommendation for good living. Or you could look at the fact that you have a will, a spirit. You know you have a will because you feel its pressing desires and wishes in the back of your mind on a daily basis. You feel it when you choose to be happy despite the circumstances or refrain from anger when it is the natural response.
We are spiritual beings just as a fish is an aquatic being and a bird an aerial being. Our natural habitat is in a spiritual world, though many of us choose not to live there. Like a bird willingly flying into a cage and locking the door behind, so also we fly from one thing to another, worrying about the results of our physical deeds as though they are the end-all-be-all of our existence.
But they are not. Realizing they are not is one of the first steps to living the eternal life now. You cannot experience life as God intended it if you continue to preach to him about things that only bring death. A bird who sings to you from inside its cage can never measure up to an eagle screeching down at you as it soars overhead.
As we increasingly integrate our life into the spiritual world of God, our life increasingly takes on the substance of the eternal.
Fly away, little birdie.
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