Your heart is wicked and cannot be trusted, it behaves this way out of an instinctual attempt to guarantee its own survival. Your heart will never enter into an agreement where it must sacrifice something for itself in order to provide for another, it goes against it's nature. Even the motherly instinct to protect a child is born out of an instinctual desire to protect the continuation of your genetic identity. Even animals do it. Your heart is the seat of your desires, and it only cares about itself, and the projection of its genetic identity into the future.
Your mind can be taught and become aware of moral principles that conflict with the desires of your heart. The suppression of your heart's desires when they conflict with the moral principles within your mind is the outworking of religion or law. This suppression of desire will cause your body to experience stress as your heart reacts to what it perceives as a threat to its survival. This stress will eventually manifest as physical and mental illness.
Some religions teach the training of the mind to overpower the desires of the heart, some religions teach the training of the mind to ignore the desires of the heart. Sometimes governments are instituted to use force to externally control those who are unable to otherwise control their body's as they respond to the desires of their heart, and not yield to the moral controls inculcated within the mind. All of these options still leave you with a heart that desires one thing, and a mind that desires another, this in-congruence leads to unhappiness. Substance abuse and insanity are often a result of one's attempt to rectify this conflict between the mind and the heart by numbing or deranging the mind so that it ceases to recognize the dissonance. Suicide is an attempt to either put an end to the pain caused by the unmet desires of the heart, or to put an end to the stress caused by the minds awareness of the depravity of those desires, whether that identification as depravity is born out of truth or not.
Blind faith, blind obedience to authority, and religion are all derangement of the mind. A belief of the mind that does not coincide with action born from the true desire of the heart. It is a mental disorder and a division of the integrity of your person. Religions of the mind project an imagination of a God or power that is outside and other than you as a person and that sets an expectation or otherwise coerces the you to conform the actions of your body to the knowledge of your mind despite the desires of your hearts. I understand the that the word "Islam" literally means "submit", and one of the principles in that religion is called "jihad" which means to struggle. The submission of the heart to the mind is indeed a struggle. Other religions use guilt or the promise of reward to provide the reasons the mind needs to overcome the heart's evil desires. Religions of science can be used to attempt to fill the mind with reason and then use that reason to control the desires of the heart. Governmental systems, which are a form of idolic worship, often use propaganda to inculcate within the mind a certain expectation of behavior that they then enforce with violence. Governments often justify their power to use violence by either becoming an intermediary to God, or by setting themselves up as the outside authority (God) and then give themselves a "mandate" to rule (control the behavior of others) by force.
God is a spirit and our minds cannot reasonably understand Him (or accept him as truth) because we lack the faculties to do it (we cannot see, touch, smell, hear, or taste God), and our hearts have no interest in Him. In the old testament God established himself in reality by manifesting his presence in a physical temple, and then established laws, on physical tablets of stone, that people were taught (with their minds), so that they could come into his presence and know about Him. The justification to their minds for conforming their bodies to those laws (against the will of their hearts), was the physical evidence of God's existence though his presence in the Temple and the recollection of the physical miracles he performed to demonstrate not only his power but also his reality. This gave the mind a reason to conform to the law of God, he was real. God did this in order to establish His identity among us, and he chose Israel to carry and protect the history of that identity though time. God never intended to relate to us permanently though the temple/law structure, however he had to establish His identity in reality in order to provide the proper context for his ultimate intention and the purpose of Christ. If He were not to have done this, then the identity and purposes that Christ claimed would have been meaningless, and by "meaningless" I mean that we would not have been able to understand the meaning of it with our minds.
The apostle Paul was well educated (with his mind) as to the law of God (Acts 22:3). So much so that he had trained his self to identify with it as who he was. When he would act "outside of his mind" he recognized that it was the desires of his heart within him acting, disconnected and separate from what his mind wanted to do (Romans 7) "Sin living within him". Because Paul was well educated in doctrines that he believed to be true it motivated him to want to conform his body to those doctrines, and not only so, but also to coerce others to conform their bodies through violence, hence his persecution of Christians (Acts 22:4). He identified sin as a wholly separate being acting unreasonably from within him, and others. He rightly defined sin as any action that was born from a desire of the heart that was not in congruence with the knowledge of the will of God. Paul's solution to this problem as a zealous Jew was to use violence to force compliance, but his solution as a Christian was much different.
The finite nature of the environment in which we live, combined with the fact that we are powerless over death cause our instinctive hearts to attempt amass as much as it needs for survival, pleasure and longevity. This activity becomes immoral rapidly as we are convinced by our hearts to commit fraud and trespass against other people in order to obtain what we need to survive, or as we use violence against them in order to force them to conform to our mind's interpretation of moral behavior. We literally begin to live by stealing the necessities of life from others, even our sociological systems begin to manifest these sins in the realities of poverty, all forms of violence, and war. The trespasses we commit against others do not happen outside of the reality of the existence of God, no matter how ignorant we may be, or may have forced ourselves to be. Inevitably, no matter the training of our mind, our hearts often take charge of our actions, and commit injustices against God and others. The obverse also happens, in our mental attempt to conform our reality to our minds understanding of morality, we use violence to coerce others to behave in the way that we see fit. These trespasses must be reckoned in order for the God who claims he is a God of justice to be so. We are either sacrificing our morality, or our desires in an attempt to survive and find peace in living.
God does not desire this kind of sacrifice however. He desires obedience, the difference being that sacrifice is the physical outworking of the mind despite the desire of the heart (the desire of the heart is what is being sacrificed), and obedience is the physical outwork of the mind and heart in agreement with one another. Similarly, enforcing a moral understanding of God on others with violence, even if the moral understanding is born of truth, is a sacrifice of the desire of the heart of another, as well as our own. God prefers mercy to this kind of coerced sacrifice. God doesn't not intend for his Children to accept or enforce His existence by means of any sacrifice outside or in addition to the sacrifice of Christ, but instead by means of internal desire and intellectual understanding.
Jesus said that if we "want" or desire to save our life, then we will lose it (Matthew 16:25), but if we lose our life we will save it. The wicked and instinctual desires of the heart are simply behavior without a consideration for morality for the sole purpose of physical survival. Ironically, to follow these desires is to guarantee death, because we ultimately don't have the power to eternally perpetuate our own survival. To submit to our heart's desire to survive is to guarantee our death. It is the want or desire to save our life that must be sacrificed in order to be moral, but that desire must be lost altogether in order to have life in the power of God.
This conflict between the mind and the heart is the dynamic that motivates the actions of our body. It is as if our mind and our heart are arguing with one another. If the heart has a desire that is stronger than the mind's reason for not satisfying it, then the mind will submit to the heart and the body will act accordingly. If the mind can provide to the heart a strong enough reason not to satisfy a desire then the heart will submit to the mind and the body will act accordingly. Because the spirit of God lived within Christ's heart, and the knowledge of God was within his mind, he was able to give us a model as to how God intended us to live in peace without this constant conflict. God chose to allow the voluntary sacrifice of the life of Christ to serve as justice for the trespasses we committed while acting out of our ignorance and out of the nature of our instinctual hearts. The resurrection of Christ from the dead provided the physically knowable reason for our minds to trust in him, and it demonstrated His power over the primary motivator of our instinctual heart, death. When we accept the sacrifice of Christ alone, the mind is able to provide to our instinctual hearts a reason so powerful that it ultimately brings about the death of all our wicked desires. God does not leave us as minds with dead hearts, but He puts within us a new heart with new desires.
True Christianity teaches us to train our minds with the knowledge of God, and that God desires to literally enthrone his spiritual self within your heart at the seat of your desires. The spirit God who cannot be detected by the faculties of the mind or body, instead of making himself manifest in a temple or idol or through a miracle or coercion, makes himself manifest by taking up residence in the heart of a human being, changing the nature of the seat of the man's desires. The knowledge of God plus his desires (His will) coming from within us cause our minds and our hearts to be at peace with one another. Jesus taught that the Kingdom of God is within us (Luke 17:21), and Paul taught us that the entire secret of the mystery of the universe can be boiled down to this: Christ is in you (Col 1:24-27). The solution is that our new heart becomes the new temple of God.
When you pray, or relate to God, if you do so to a God that is "out there", or if you live as if you are being coerced to behave by a God "up in heaven" or "out there" or in a church or temple or in the teachings of a dead person or of a living person that is trying to control you with guilt or the promises of fleshly rewards, then you are worshiping an idol. God is not "up there". He is inside of you.
Practice the presence of God by focusing your mind on your heart and recognizing the Kingdom of God (who's origin is the Cross of Christ) is inside of you and capable of directing your desires and providing a peaceful agreement between what your mind knows and what your heart wants. Do this by focusing your mind on the words of the prayer that Jesus taught us:
The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? -Jeremiah 17:9
Your mind can be taught and become aware of moral principles that conflict with the desires of your heart. The suppression of your heart's desires when they conflict with the moral principles within your mind is the outworking of religion or law. This suppression of desire will cause your body to experience stress as your heart reacts to what it perceives as a threat to its survival. This stress will eventually manifest as physical and mental illness.
Some religions teach the training of the mind to overpower the desires of the heart, some religions teach the training of the mind to ignore the desires of the heart. Sometimes governments are instituted to use force to externally control those who are unable to otherwise control their body's as they respond to the desires of their heart, and not yield to the moral controls inculcated within the mind. All of these options still leave you with a heart that desires one thing, and a mind that desires another, this in-congruence leads to unhappiness. Substance abuse and insanity are often a result of one's attempt to rectify this conflict between the mind and the heart by numbing or deranging the mind so that it ceases to recognize the dissonance. Suicide is an attempt to either put an end to the pain caused by the unmet desires of the heart, or to put an end to the stress caused by the minds awareness of the depravity of those desires, whether that identification as depravity is born out of truth or not.
Blind faith, blind obedience to authority, and religion are all derangement of the mind. A belief of the mind that does not coincide with action born from the true desire of the heart. It is a mental disorder and a division of the integrity of your person. Religions of the mind project an imagination of a God or power that is outside and other than you as a person and that sets an expectation or otherwise coerces the you to conform the actions of your body to the knowledge of your mind despite the desires of your hearts. I understand the that the word "Islam" literally means "submit", and one of the principles in that religion is called "jihad" which means to struggle. The submission of the heart to the mind is indeed a struggle. Other religions use guilt or the promise of reward to provide the reasons the mind needs to overcome the heart's evil desires. Religions of science can be used to attempt to fill the mind with reason and then use that reason to control the desires of the heart. Governmental systems, which are a form of idolic worship, often use propaganda to inculcate within the mind a certain expectation of behavior that they then enforce with violence. Governments often justify their power to use violence by either becoming an intermediary to God, or by setting themselves up as the outside authority (God) and then give themselves a "mandate" to rule (control the behavior of others) by force.
John 4: 21 "Woman," Jesus replied, "believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth."
God is a spirit and our minds cannot reasonably understand Him (or accept him as truth) because we lack the faculties to do it (we cannot see, touch, smell, hear, or taste God), and our hearts have no interest in Him. In the old testament God established himself in reality by manifesting his presence in a physical temple, and then established laws, on physical tablets of stone, that people were taught (with their minds), so that they could come into his presence and know about Him. The justification to their minds for conforming their bodies to those laws (against the will of their hearts), was the physical evidence of God's existence though his presence in the Temple and the recollection of the physical miracles he performed to demonstrate not only his power but also his reality. This gave the mind a reason to conform to the law of God, he was real. God did this in order to establish His identity among us, and he chose Israel to carry and protect the history of that identity though time. God never intended to relate to us permanently though the temple/law structure, however he had to establish His identity in reality in order to provide the proper context for his ultimate intention and the purpose of Christ. If He were not to have done this, then the identity and purposes that Christ claimed would have been meaningless, and by "meaningless" I mean that we would not have been able to understand the meaning of it with our minds.
The apostle Paul was well educated (with his mind) as to the law of God (Acts 22:3). So much so that he had trained his self to identify with it as who he was. When he would act "outside of his mind" he recognized that it was the desires of his heart within him acting, disconnected and separate from what his mind wanted to do (Romans 7) "Sin living within him". Because Paul was well educated in doctrines that he believed to be true it motivated him to want to conform his body to those doctrines, and not only so, but also to coerce others to conform their bodies through violence, hence his persecution of Christians (Acts 22:4). He identified sin as a wholly separate being acting unreasonably from within him, and others. He rightly defined sin as any action that was born from a desire of the heart that was not in congruence with the knowledge of the will of God. Paul's solution to this problem as a zealous Jew was to use violence to force compliance, but his solution as a Christian was much different.
The finite nature of the environment in which we live, combined with the fact that we are powerless over death cause our instinctive hearts to attempt amass as much as it needs for survival, pleasure and longevity. This activity becomes immoral rapidly as we are convinced by our hearts to commit fraud and trespass against other people in order to obtain what we need to survive, or as we use violence against them in order to force them to conform to our mind's interpretation of moral behavior. We literally begin to live by stealing the necessities of life from others, even our sociological systems begin to manifest these sins in the realities of poverty, all forms of violence, and war. The trespasses we commit against others do not happen outside of the reality of the existence of God, no matter how ignorant we may be, or may have forced ourselves to be. Inevitably, no matter the training of our mind, our hearts often take charge of our actions, and commit injustices against God and others. The obverse also happens, in our mental attempt to conform our reality to our minds understanding of morality, we use violence to coerce others to behave in the way that we see fit. These trespasses must be reckoned in order for the God who claims he is a God of justice to be so. We are either sacrificing our morality, or our desires in an attempt to survive and find peace in living.
But Samuel replied: "Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the LORD? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams. -1 Samuel 15:22
God does not desire this kind of sacrifice however. He desires obedience, the difference being that sacrifice is the physical outworking of the mind despite the desire of the heart (the desire of the heart is what is being sacrificed), and obedience is the physical outwork of the mind and heart in agreement with one another. Similarly, enforcing a moral understanding of God on others with violence, even if the moral understanding is born of truth, is a sacrifice of the desire of the heart of another, as well as our own. God prefers mercy to this kind of coerced sacrifice. God doesn't not intend for his Children to accept or enforce His existence by means of any sacrifice outside or in addition to the sacrifice of Christ, but instead by means of internal desire and intellectual understanding.
For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings. -Hosea 6:6
Jesus said that if we "want" or desire to save our life, then we will lose it (Matthew 16:25), but if we lose our life we will save it. The wicked and instinctual desires of the heart are simply behavior without a consideration for morality for the sole purpose of physical survival. Ironically, to follow these desires is to guarantee death, because we ultimately don't have the power to eternally perpetuate our own survival. To submit to our heart's desire to survive is to guarantee our death. It is the want or desire to save our life that must be sacrificed in order to be moral, but that desire must be lost altogether in order to have life in the power of God.
This conflict between the mind and the heart is the dynamic that motivates the actions of our body. It is as if our mind and our heart are arguing with one another. If the heart has a desire that is stronger than the mind's reason for not satisfying it, then the mind will submit to the heart and the body will act accordingly. If the mind can provide to the heart a strong enough reason not to satisfy a desire then the heart will submit to the mind and the body will act accordingly. Because the spirit of God lived within Christ's heart, and the knowledge of God was within his mind, he was able to give us a model as to how God intended us to live in peace without this constant conflict. God chose to allow the voluntary sacrifice of the life of Christ to serve as justice for the trespasses we committed while acting out of our ignorance and out of the nature of our instinctual hearts. The resurrection of Christ from the dead provided the physically knowable reason for our minds to trust in him, and it demonstrated His power over the primary motivator of our instinctual heart, death. When we accept the sacrifice of Christ alone, the mind is able to provide to our instinctual hearts a reason so powerful that it ultimately brings about the death of all our wicked desires. God does not leave us as minds with dead hearts, but He puts within us a new heart with new desires.
"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh." Ezekiel 36:26
"Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart." -Psalm 37:4
True Christianity teaches us to train our minds with the knowledge of God, and that God desires to literally enthrone his spiritual self within your heart at the seat of your desires. The spirit God who cannot be detected by the faculties of the mind or body, instead of making himself manifest in a temple or idol or through a miracle or coercion, makes himself manifest by taking up residence in the heart of a human being, changing the nature of the seat of the man's desires. The knowledge of God plus his desires (His will) coming from within us cause our minds and our hearts to be at peace with one another. Jesus taught that the Kingdom of God is within us (Luke 17:21), and Paul taught us that the entire secret of the mystery of the universe can be boiled down to this: Christ is in you (Col 1:24-27). The solution is that our new heart becomes the new temple of God.
"Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?" 1 Cor 3:16
When you pray, or relate to God, if you do so to a God that is "out there", or if you live as if you are being coerced to behave by a God "up in heaven" or "out there" or in a church or temple or in the teachings of a dead person or of a living person that is trying to control you with guilt or the promises of fleshly rewards, then you are worshiping an idol. God is not "up there". He is inside of you.
Practice the presence of God by focusing your mind on your heart and recognizing the Kingdom of God (who's origin is the Cross of Christ) is inside of you and capable of directing your desires and providing a peaceful agreement between what your mind knows and what your heart wants. Do this by focusing your mind on the words of the prayer that Jesus taught us:
Our father, who is in heaven (in our hearts), Hallowed by your name (which is our name, because you are our father). Your Kingdom Come (in our hearts), Your will be done (by our minds causing our bodies to act according to the desires of our hearts), On earth (through our bodies) as it is in Heaven (in our hearts). Give is this day our daily bread (so we won't worry about death), And forgive our trespasses (when we did worry about death and stole from another by fraud or violence or only acted out of knowledge and tried to coerce others to conform to that knowledge), As we forgive those who trespass against us (in this way the forgiveness of God is manifest through our bodies). Lead us not into temptation (by replacing the seat of our desires in our hearts), But deliver us from evil (by allowing our minds to know how to control our bodies thereby removing us as a threat to others and others as a threat to us).
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