I have realized (DUH!) that so much of what I am struggling with is related to the lack of truth in the inward parts.
Scripture, and prayer, and talk become so rote and it just seems to be absorbed into the background as trite, cliché sound bytes I don’t really realize them.
That is good and bad.
It is good, because I don’t mind scripture rattling around in my subconscious. I believe that God thinks those ways about me, and to have them roll around in there cannot hurt.
The bad part is they are not conscious. But many of my needs for truth are conscious. My battle with alienation, and loneliness, and the lack of ability to maintain consistency in thought and deed. And that’s just the publishable stuff.
After a recent bout of struggle, that seemed to have its start in what I call
existential loneliness. I know God didn’t create me this way, but it seems like my literal creation has within it, by creation, a loneliness, and an alienation that I cannot seem to subdue. I don’t mean to sound morose or self pitying. It just seems like when I struggle, it starts there, and manifest outward until it influences conscious thoughts and experiences that get ugly.
It tempts/forces you to draw a conclusion so that you can reconcile this experience. If I fell this way, then I (or they, or it) must be....
But the TRUTH, is that God is (insanely I think) interested in me. On a very primal, fundamental level, the whole reason I was created, and the universe itself, and matter, and energy etc.. was because I was wanted and desired. This isn’t solipsistic. I am not the center of creation. But it was all made because God wanted me, and made me a time/space environment to express that.
But I don’t get that in the inward parts. I don’t know why.
I know the theology of it. I know Adam came to a shocking conclusion about himself, helped out by the antithesis of Being. And he hardened his heart towards Gods presence, which was just the same that day as it had been for days/months/years. But that one day, he couldn’t handle being with God any more. His voice now sounded like lightning and thunder (it must have been similar to what the Israelites heard when Moses went up there). And ever since, we are born into a bizarre, existential loneliness.
I know that life experiences tell me I should feel this way. But only some. I have had NUMEROUS experiences that SCREAM the opposite. From friends and family, all the way to mystical transactions with God that get some intense, in the moment you feel like you are going to come apart God is so real and near and inside.
But when it comes right down to it, the fight start in the inward parts. I don’t know where they are, but I know that until I get new ones, I will have to maintain a fight for truth starting right there. It is irrelevant what anyone else does/says/thinks. No matter what they do, nice, good, bad, mean etc.. without the vigilance and violence of truth in the inward parts, I will never maintain the truth in the conscious, active part of life.
This is the scripture that come up from my subconscious that started this meditation
Ps 51:66 Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.(NIV)
I just kept hearing that over and over again in my brain. But now that I look at that verse, look at the whole thing it comes from.
Ps 51:1-191 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge. Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place. Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity. Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will turn back to you. Save me from bloodguilt, O God, the God who saves me, and my tongue will sing of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. In your good pleasure make Zion prosper; build up the walls of Jerusalem. Then there will be righteous sacrifices, whole burnt offerings to delight you; then bulls will be offered on your altar.(NIV)
Boy this is what I need. And that is why I need it. It isn’t just my sin and my actions; it is underneath the sin as well. The lack of truth and wisdom inside has led me as much as anything else. Was I sinful at birth. Sure. But not in action yet. But the resulting lack of truth and wisdom inside leads us into an regrettable set of decisions that can only be counteracted with truth and wisdom being delivered right to the root, deep inside the existence of a person. And it has to be a constant experience, not an event. And then it begins to counteract the process, and wars against it until God gives us all a new inward part/system/matrix whatever the heck it is.
Boy that is going to be GREAT! Until then, it is a truly worshipful action to present to God my inward parts, and willfully submit them to the truth. I think this single act is much more important to me than I know, and God is bubbling out of my unconscious and directing me.
I agree with God that YOU would have truth in the inward parts.
