If you don’t mind speaking to this, I didn’t mean for my question to be rhetorical: When and how did you see the good work God began in you?
I think the nature of what Mark (and the McGilchrist quote he referenced) was that there must be things even within us - buried down in what we might loosely just label as our subconscience (to use a catch-all phrase for everything that we can’t consciously access - much less then analyze or appraise) which will nonetheless profoundly affect (for good or ill) what we do and who we are. And it seems naive for a believer to assume that God couldn’t or wouldn’t have been working in those areas long before there could be any possibility of our awareness of it (or so deep that we would never ever be aware of it). So by definition, this isn’t something that I could give you examples about. It’s just a pure conviction of faith that God would have been active in us from long ago. …“You knit me together in my mother’s womb…”
But I can see results - things that I can teach to students I’m responsible for today which I think can qualify as God’s good work, and I have faith I was being prepared for that long before I ever had any idea I would ever be an educator. We see the bubble when it surfaces to our consciousness, but I can’t see where in the depths that bubble may have begun to form.
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With a book like Conversations with God, I find it naive to assume, I’m not sure that is the right word, that every spirit of the unconscious is from God, or even a drop of the divine that leads to belief in God.
I am familiar with Robert Bly and do appreciate how deep that well of our subconscious can run. But we are to test the spirits, and any spirit which does not confess Jesus is to be disregarded. Which I have taken to mean, that if someone is having a talk with God and doesn’t have a sense for his majesty and holiness and their sinfulness, then I am skeptical to say the least.
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Yes. Or likewise infers something about their subjective feelings or objective experience that does not accord with that.
…even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.
2 Corinthians 11:14
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There is also this, which came to mind as I thought of sheared consciences:
Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits… through the insincerity of a liars whose consciences are seared
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As someone who occasionally writes fiction and poetry, I find this fascinating. I’ve definitely had a character “surprise” me when writing dialogue, but I’ve never experienced what Dickens did. OTOH, he’s an all-time great, and I’m just a dilettante.
Co-creation with God is a pillar of Christian theology. Since God is Creator and humanity is created in his image, of course we imitate him in that aspect. The “creative spark” is ubiquitous in humanity. I am presently reading a book by Agustin Fuentes that argues creativity and imagination are what made us “unique” among God’s creatures.
Right. I think that’s pretty much how it happens. How does God draw us to himself? By beating us into submission with logical propositions and facts? I don’t think so. “Saving faith” isn’t mental agreement with a particular dogma. As Pascal said, “It is the heart which experiences God, and not the reason. This, then, is faith: God felt by the heart, not by the reason.” He connects faith with an “intuition” of God. (Romans 2.) What is intuition if not a subconscious work of the Holy Spirit?
That book isn’t even remotely connected to the thread. Anyone who thinks God is directly conversing with them is delusional.
It’s best not to confuse the end with the beginning. It’s also a good idea not to denigrate whatever work the Holy Spirit might be doing that doesn’t conform to your personal experience. Don’t take your own experience as normative for everyone else.
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I doubt you’re anything like that. As it happens I turned the television on to see which channel the Warriors/Lakers game would be on and the time and guess what should be on? The Man Who Invented Christmas, a story about Dickens writing A Christmas Carol. It portrays this merging of creative making things up with perceiving to a T. If you’ve never seen it please do and tell me what you think. I’m loving it.
Also I too can relate to the process albeit not about writing but drawing instead. From the time I was knee high and put down for a nap I’d lay in bed, look at the texture in the stucco or in the wood grain and just see all manner of things. It wasn’t imposed but just noting what appeared. Later I’d entertain younger siblings and cousins by inviting them to make a scribble which I would then complete into whatever image presented. They would compete to guess first what it would be. Entirely frivolous. So I’ll take the dilettante title, thank you very much. Certainly was nothing divine in it and yet it was useful in its own way just to learn to wait and then simply record what is given. It informs the way I read philosophy. Not brainstorming to pick out the most apt interpretation but just reading it to hear the authors voice and intent looking for the meaning. This supports my sense that there is something within that sees and knows more and listening and waiting for those thoughts rather than rushing to judgment is the … trick?
I do believe IM is on to something and has tied together many threads in a way entirely supportive of of Christian faith, though not it exclusively. I wonder if the church could accept that sort of endorsement and learn to live alongside peer traditions, each capable of enriching the other?
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I’ve been around long enough not to be that closed minded. I’m also trinitarian so unity and diversity are both ultimately real. That means there is a whole range of experience in the kingdom of God.
If one asks the question in that manner the answer is obvious. No. But the question is valid. How do we submit our spiritual thinking to the:Logos? This assumes of course that we do not worship the Trinity, which includes the Logos as the Secondf Person.
The:Logos was originally a philosophical term, now the Logos is part of the Trinity and science as in sociology and psychology. We cannot separate God from the Logos any more than we can separate God from Love (Agape) and the Creation (the universe.)
The best analogy for the Trinity is mind, body, spirit. I am my body, I am my mind, I am my spirit., But best of all I am all three of them together.
I’d been going to share this recently but then I read it over and thought, well that isn’t so interesting in itself. But since it seems it will be built upon with more striking results soon perhaps it is worth including. So if you’re looking for something with immediate bag you might better pass this one by.
Continuing on from the except and discussion on the way imagination contributes to the world we experience:
… In order to describe such things more adequately one needs, perhaps, a language in which the boundary between ‘I’ and ‘it’ is fluid …
This notion of a fluid boundary between ‘I’ and ‘it’ will be as important to later discussion as Wordsworth’s idea that we half perceive and half create the world.
In this process, the detached ego is an impediment. It thinks it can make something happen, when it is best employed in keeping out of the way. Since we don’t know what it is the imagination is trying to reach and disclose, our wilful attempts are negative. By contrast negation is positive. Resting in a state of not doing and not knowing permits us to be the agents of revelation. It is not often enough remarked that science establishes what is not the case; that we are propelled into philosophy similarly, by the feeling that something widely held to be the case cannot, in reality, be the case.
I’ve not been moved to share a current excerpt from TMWT for a few days but there will be a Zoom conversation coming up that is free between IM and Philip Goyal, a theoretical physicist and Associate Professor at the University at Albany (SUNY). Could be an opportunity to gauge how good a grasp IM has on the science. Though that isn’t his field he does write about that too. A weekday morning probably rules it out for all but retired. I’ll be there.
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