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Exchanged Glory II: The OK Stronghold
If Adam and Eve had really been interested in the knowledge of good and evil, they would have bared their souls instead of covering their rears!
Several years ago, I worked with a Muslim man. In spite of our major theological differences, I was able to talk with him in ways I couldn’t with others. It was refreshing to find a coworker willing to speak about issues like faith, law, and revelation. We enjoyed an unusual friendship as two religious people in the middle of a secular world.
He wasn’t from the “kill the infidels” flavor of Islam, so we shared graciously and politely about Americans. I asked, “Have you noticed that most people in this country have a view of the world that they think is obvious to all? They find it almost impossible to believe that any sane person could see life differently.” He agreed. He had come from Egypt, where life was perceived very differently, and he felt that most Americans didn’t understand his people.
An inability to comprehend other cultures isn’t unique to Americans. All humans have trouble understanding other societies. We have learned from earliest childhood to measure reality by one set of standards. A world based on a different set doesn’t feel right to us.
There is a healthy side to this. If a neighbor told us that Joseph Stalin spoke to him every night and told him what to wear the next day, we would think he was nuts. Our view of the world doesn’t (and shouldn’t) allow for dead tyrants to speak to us. Such convictions give us perspective. They are part of an inner wisdom that guides our mind as we sort through life’s possibilities. Without them anything would be possible, and we would find ourselves at the mercy of superstition.
There is a down side to this, however. It is that once we have formed our beliefs, we rarely change them. This is especially true of adults. We often stubbornly refuse to question our convictions unless it becomes obvious that they are causing us pain.
What is amazing about this is that we rarely work hard at forming them. How many of us have studied religion and philosophy enough to gain skill for the task? Far more people think they are experts than have been trained.
Along with this, a large number of our beliefs entered our hearts before we were old enough to test them. They were passed down to us by families, schools, churches, TVs, radios, and the internet. Contradictions and confusion were presented as truth. Our young minds took it all in, attempted to make sense of it, and built a mental picture of how life worked. Some of us made an accurate picture; others made a distorted one. Either way, we have been basing our choices on it ever since.
In time, our mental picture became a part of our identity, a sort of gut instinct about who we were and how the world worked. We no longer questioned it; it was just the way life was. We knew that others might see the world differently, but we felt that our beliefs worked pretty well for us.
Besides, who had a right to tell us we were wrong? And how could we hope to change our gut instinct? We weren’t sure how it got there, and we couldn’t imagine how to rearrange it.
According to God, we don’t have a right to make our own mental pictures. Instead, we have a responsibility to pursue His definition of truth. We certainly have the ability to do otherwise, but we are created for far more than our own ideas. Hanging on to them will eventually produce suffering.
Jesus said, "I am the Road, also the Truth, also the Life. No one gets to the Father apart from me.”
(John 14:6, The Message)
If we make up our own Road to the Father, we won’t reach Him. We will miss our ticket to His home in heaven. Our gut instinct may tell us differently, but God has spelled out His Truth in the Bible.
According to His word, our mental pictures are sadly mistaken.
This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart. (emphasis added)
Think about the strength of these words. Our minds are in futility, and our understanding is darkened. We are in deep ignorance and blindness of heart.
…who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.
Our misguided attempts to understand the world aren’t harmless. They lead us to be past feeling, so that our emotions are unable to protect us. We lose or never find the wisdom we need to experience sex and other areas of life as God intended. We give ourselves over to lewdness and fall into any number of sins. This is part of the price we pay for making up “truth” rather than learning it from Him.
Our own view of life has been a problem from the beginning.
GOD commanded the Man, "You can eat from any tree in the garden, except from the Tree-of-Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil. Don't eat from it. The moment you eat from that tree, you're dead.” (emphasis added)
(Genesis 2:16-17, The Message)
The serpent told the Woman, "You won't die. God knows that the moment you eat from that tree, you'll see what's really going on. You'll be just like God, knowing everything, ranging all the way from good to evil." (emphasis added)
(Genesis 3:4-5, The Message)
There is some debate among Christians about what the Tree-of-Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil represents. I will give my opinion. I don’t believe we should think that Adam and Eve were ignorant about good and evil before they ate the forbidden fruit. They knew that everything God created was good (Genesis 1:31). They also knew that it was evil to disobey God and eat the fruit. How else could they have understood His command?
Their hearts contained an accurate and growing mental picture of life. God wants His children to have this sort of knowledge so they can embrace His kindness and turn away from what is wrong.
But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.
(Hebrews 5:14, NAS)
So what could be wrong with the Tree-of-Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil? I believe it was that when Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they chose to define good and evil apart from God’s revelation. They started to make their own mental picture of life to replace His, and they began to form their gut instinct apart from His instruction. They came up with their own view of how life should work.
Immediately the two of them did "see what's really going on" — saw themselves naked! They sewed fig leaves together as makeshift clothes for themselves. …He [Adam] said, "I heard you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked. And I hid." GOD said, "Who told you you were naked? Did you eat from that tree I told you not to eat from?" (emphasis added)
(Genesis 3:7, 10-11, The Message)
Was there anything wrong with being naked? As husband and wife, Adam and Eve didn’t need to hide from each other. And did God care if He saw their skin? Why did they hide?
They hid because they were creating their own knowledge of good and evil, and they knew that doing so was wrong. Hiding helped them to suppress the guilt and shame they felt. They had turned away from God’s command, and their conscience was bothering them. They couldn’t rid themselves of their inner uneasiness, but they could quiet it by not allowing an outsider to see who they were becoming.
If Adam and Eve had really been interested in the knowledge of good and evil, they would have bared their souls instead of covering their rears! They would have confessed their sin and asked God what they should do about it: “We have disobeyed. We feel powerful emotions that we have never experienced before. How should we handle them?”
Instead, they hid. It was an attempt to avoid God’s counsel: “What should I do about my shame? I know; I’ll cover it with fig leaves and run into the bushes. If God doesn’t see me, I won’t feel guilty, and if I don’t feel guilty, maybe I will be OK.”
They thought that their sin could be buried and forgotten by avoiding the light. We see the beginning of Ephesians 4:17-18. Their understanding was becoming darkened.
The Man said, "The Woman you gave me as a companion, she gave me fruit from the tree, and, yes, I ate it." GOD said to the Woman, "What is this that you've done?" "The serpent seduced me," she said, "and I ate."
(Genesis 3:12-13, The Message)
When we make excuses for sin, we are forming an independent knowledge of good and evil. God says that we are wrong, but we say, “It’s not me! It’s the woman’s fault!” We are creating a false knowledge – a deception. Our mental picture is becoming distorted. We are rejecting God’s revelation and falling into the futility of our mind.
Mankind continues to act like Adam and Eve. We make up our beliefs apart from God’s revelation.
But the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! … What happened was this: People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn't treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives.
(Romans 1:19, 21, The Message)
We each embrace confusion as if it was truth, but do we each do it in a totally unique way? I think it is clear that within a culture we tend to share common confusion. We develop ideas we pass to each other and to our children. We come up with joint mental pictures, no matter how misled, that help define who we are and how we live. There are American versions, Islamic versions, and many others.
Part of our walk with Jesus is to face up to what Ephesians 4:17-18 says about our man-made beliefs. They are expressions of the ignorance that is in us. They are cultural forms of our blindness of heart. Our tendency might be to hide in the bushes, but we need to let God’s light shine.
You groped your way through that murk once, but no longer. You're out in the open now. The bright light of Christ makes your way plain. So no more stumbling around. Get on with it. The good, the right, the true — these are the actions appropriate for daylight hours. Figure out what will please Christ, and then do it. Don't waste your time on useless work, mere busywork, the barren pursuits of darkness. Expose these things for the sham they are.
(Ephesians 5:8-11, The Message)
God helps us to understand and overcome the false mental pictures that have infected us. It can be a difficult process, however. The Bible calls our bad thinking habits “strongholds.” They are like well protected military positions.
For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. (emphasis added)
My country, the United States of America, has strongholds. We have basic assumptions about life that exalt themselves against the knowledge of God. They have been shaped by decades of TV, music, education, business, and advertising. Our mistaken knowledge of good and evil almost seems to be part of the air we breathe. We have inhaled and absorbed it in so many different ways that we see it as obvious truth. As I mentioned to my Muslim friend, we can’t imagine any sane person viewing the world differently.
I am not saying that our strongholds don’t seem to work well for us, at least on the surface. We are economically wealthy, have enjoyable entertainment, and have been blessed with years of relative social peace. Because of this, some have concluded that our misconceptions are a gift from God for mankind.
The Bible tells us differently. These misconceptions contradict His heart and should be pulled down.
How can we hope to counter ideas that are so pervasive, powerful, and seemingly positive? Billions of dollars are spent to reinforce them. They seem to bring prosperity to many, and those around us rejoice in them. Defeating them is a humanly impossible task. We can only overcome them by using weapons that are mighty in God for pulling down strongholds. Our Father in heaven gives us the ability to expose them for the sham they are. By His grace, we can bring a better way.
In this book, I will talk about one specific stronghold. It is a set of beliefs that causes us to center on trying to feel OK about ourselves, and it teaches us that we can find fulfillment apart from Jesus. When combined with our culture’s glorification of tolerance,[13] it removes the foundations of truth, leaving us floating in a sea of doubt. For some of us, it leads to an addictive mindset that traps us in destructive sins.
I first became aware of it about eighteen years ago. Through a struggle in my job, I realized I was approaching life in the wrong way, trying to mix my culture’s mental picture with God’s. I eventually stumbled onto a way to describe how my heart was going astray. It helped me to identify my own knowledge of good and evil so that I could replace it with God’s. I began to lay out what I called the “OK Stronghold.”
In the early 1990s, I pulled my ideas together into a teaching for church and spoke on it for close to an hour on a hot summer day. It was too long, but I was excited. I felt I had found incredible insights that had changed my life, and I wanted to share them.
While writing the Exchanged Glory series, I dug up my old notes and began to write what I thought would be a small number of chapters on the OK Stronghold. I was amazed at how much my understanding had grown, and I ended up writing fifteen chapters. It seemed best to make those chapters into a separate book – the book you are reading.
I am still excited. It is hard to measure the impact that these insights have had on my life. I pray that as you read, they will shed light on the ignorance that is in us. I pray that by the weapons of God, you will be able to pull down the OK Stronghold in your own life.
Bill Cadden
2007
P.S. At the back of this book, there is a Glossary of special terms like “OK Stronghold.”
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