Independence Day for your Soul

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Our greatest wish beyond love is to live in freedom. Freedom and love are inescapably bound together. This week we will be celebrating Independence Day.  As a nation we enjoy much freedom but still we could be likened to Jesus’ disciples who flippantly declared to Jesus, “We’ve never been slaves to anyone!”  Do we enjoy true freedom or just the illusion of it?

Can truth really set you free?

“Jesus said to the people who believed in him, you are truly my disciples if you remain faithful to my teachings.  And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

 “But we are descendants of Abraham,” they said. “We have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean, ‘You will be set free’?”

Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave of sin. A slave is not a permanent member of the family, but a son or daughter is part of the family forever. So if the Son sets you free, you are truly free.” – John 8:31-36

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Looking for a forever family

I especially appreciate the line, “A slave is not a permanent member of the family, but a son or daughter is part of the family forever.” We want to part of God’s family forever but that means we have to come out of the position of being a slave to anything.

Nobody likes to think about sin! In fact, just hearing the word immediately causes your mind to leap summersaults to figure out how to position yourself so that you have reasonable deniability. “I don’t sin. That’s the other guy’s problem.” The word sin comes with so much baggage.

Sin isn’t the stuff of dungeons and dragons and evil warlords. It’s simply the result of not living according to our original nature.

Most of us sin on a day-to-day basis simply because we don’t understand our original nature. That’s why Jesus said, “The truth will set you free.” If we understand how we are meant to be then we can live according to our original nature and find the freedom we long for. Most sin is committed because we either want to receive selfish gain or we want to avoid pain. It’s not necessarily evil per se but is born from a warped sense of self.

If you delve behind sin, you find something understandable. People are mostly try to hide their hurts and indignities and resort to lashing out at others in the hope of hiding their true vulnerability. God just wants us to be honest about where we are coming from and free ourselves of what He considers our false nature or a nature not befitting the sons and daughters of God.

Letting go

We are well acquainted with the notion of confession. Walk into any Catholic church and you will see a confessional. It’s designed to give anonymity so that you can freely confess and be duly liberated. But I was reminded the other day as I drove the Dunkin Donuts drive through that there is no such thing as anonymity. The server immediately recognized my voice and said, “Cream only, right?”  None of us are anonymous to God. He is not looking to blame or shame.

If confession is important what difference does it make? When the goal is to live according to our original nature then confession, rather than an extensive guilt trip, is simply the recognition within oneself that something else is going on. We have to find an inner honesty so that our Heavenly Parent can treat us as the children we are and not as slaves. When a slave or servant makes a mistake the master might reprimand, punish, or even fire the offender. That person is gone forever and the relationship is cut off, but if a child makes a mistake it’s a teachable moment and love never stops flowing. Nevertheless, the parent cannot teach if the child doesn’t recognize or admit that something is wrong. God is not looking for people to drag themselves across the cathedral stones on their knees in repentance. He is simply hoping for a little, honest self-reflection.

Searching for that “Now I get it!” moment

Most dishonesty is small. That’s why it’s dangerous. Little white lies flow easily. The movie Liar, Liar is a hilarious study of sin, and hopefully, the presence of comedy allows for a little self-reflection. We have all done it – you stand in the 12 items or less, lane with a full cart hoping no-one will notice or say anything. Like Ace Ventura the sins compound until one day you are so deep you can’t climb out of the hole you have dug for yourself. A lie is a lie, and even little sins affect the soul and take us out of alignment with God. Self-reflection and prayer are a good way to keep honest.

John Ortberg in his book, “Soul Keeping” shares about a very interesting study. He writes that St Paul referred to himself as the worst sinner. Why did he do that? Could he objectively determine that? Was that simply false humility or spoken out of true conviction? Maybe God has spoken in your heart and you have felt like this too at some time or another. A study titled, Neural Consequences of Religious Belief on Self-Referential Processing” shows that prayer, meditation and confession can make us less self-referential and more aware of what God thinks. That is an audacious statement. Regardless, it’s what the research shows. The study revealed that non-religious subjects used one part of the brain to evaluate themselves and another part to evaluate others. It now makes sense how you can judge someone for something they did, that you seemingly comfortably do yourself with impunity. We have a tendency to judge ourselves based on our intent but judge others based on their actions. Christians in this study used the same part of the brain to evaluate themselves as they did others. Researchers surmised that what this all adds up to is the reality that people of faith try to see themselves as God does; that is their point of reference. This is what it means to come out of a self-centered reality and try to see the bigger picture.  Prayer, reflection, or meditation in relationship with God enables you to have a new perspective on yourself. When you learn to see yourself from God’s point of view you can dig yourself out of the hole so to speak. Learning to see and value ourselves as God does is a game changer.

Saving your soul by letting go of fake

To find our original self we have to drop the fake self. That’s easier said than done. In another study, researchers at Duke University and Harvard University wanted to know how being adorned with something fake affected people. They randomly divided the female research subjects into two groups. One group was given expensive Chloe sunglasses to wear, but the other group was told the sunglasses they had to wear were knock-offs. This latter group in a later activity was more likely to cheat than the group that was wearing the real thing. Our souls don’t like it when we fake it and they are impacted by the experience whether we like it or not.

Wearing fake sunglasses causes us to feel at odds with ourselves. Similarly we are uncomfortable at the soul level when we encounter our own selfish motivation. You mistakenly think that misappropriating things will lead to happiness but in reality the opposite is true. We have to throw away our selfish motivation in order to live in harmony with our original nature.

Our original nature craves the real deal.

This is why honesty is so important. Honesty leads to clarity and when you try to see with the part of your brain that allows you to see yourself as God sees you, it is cause for celebration! It’s a “Now I get it” moment that leads to your liberation and allows your original nature to emerge unfettered.

Discovering your original nature

Once you have honestly looked into your own heart and set aside the selfish and the destructive within, you are free as the sons and daughters of God to grow your original nature.

God isn’t looking for blame and shame or to have us wallow in the mindset of, “I’m no good.” But it’s not until we are able to determine within ourselves what is healthy and what is harmful to our soul that we can begin to come into our own as sons and daughters of God.

To return to God we have to learn how to live for others. We have to allow God to shape and mold our character, and grow our ability to love. That means that God will send us a wide variety of people who we wouldn’t normally connect to. Their personalities may not be pleasing to us but God is in the growth business because he wants to free us from the small boxes we put ourselves in. He hopes we can set aside our own self-centered agenda. There is something to learn from each and every person we encouter. With a mind and heart like that, our own original nature will blossom.

Rev Moon often talked about how he wanted to learn from each and every person he met. This is how God teaches us. The things you learn over the years can enlarge your point of view about God and your own life with the result that you can live a very large and beautiful life.

“Having a limited point of view is like living in a small one room apartment that you can barely fit into. Maybe you enjoy it today, but how do you know if you can like it in ten years? You will probably hate it by then…When people join the Unification Movement they learn the deepest truths about history and their own lives.” – Rev Sun Myung Moon

 Is God free?

Religions have typically held that God is almighty and omniscient and so far above us that we cannot possibly know him. The thinking is that sin separates us from God no matter how hard we try. St Paul reminds us that even though we are saved we still sin. If this is true then God is doomed to a life of loneliness. He is a prisoner of his own unrequited love and in a way a kind of beggar looking for love. This is totally different from what religions typically teach. But if we think about it long and hard, it rings true; for love to exist it must be felt and it cannot be felt without someone or something, an equal partner, receiving that love and returning it. God needs us to be truly free!father & son

God is almighty and far beyond us but because we are his children he bends down low and lifts us up. He grows together with us.

Rev Moon always taught,

“God is perfect but love cannot be felt unless there is a partner. You will know this if you have children. If your child is five years old, you have to play with your child as if you were five years old as well.”

Parents do this all the time. Our Heavenly Parent is waiting for us to grow up so that more of His own heart can emerge in relationship with us. Our growth is God’s growth, our liberation is God’s liberation, and our freedom is God’s freedom. When we discover our original nature and manifest that, God is proud and like any parent revels in the achievements and beauty of His children.

This Independence Day enjoy true freedom by casting off anything you are a slave to. Develop your original nature so that our Heavenly Parent can experience true love together with you.

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