I haven’t attended this group yet, but I do have a concern
about their promotional – a rejection of the all-important role of the mind,
even in finding peace:
·
In this discussion group, we talk about how to
find peace in the moment by turning down the constant chatter in the mind. We
explore the nature of the mind and how it works in the background, affecting
our mood and influencing our every move. Discover how to find happiness in
everyday activities.
I think that this group leader recognizes something important
about the activity of the mind. When it fails to find a solution, it can run us
about in circles of disturbing self-obsessions, in an attempt to find a way out
of our dilemmas.
However, the goal shouldn’t be to close the mind down, as a
restaurant during Covid-19, but to open it up to listen to what it says about
our spiritual/psychological condition. Our mind is telling us something
important – perhaps that we have made a wrong beginning somewhere. Perhaps it’s
like buttoning our shirt by starting with the wrong button. If so, it means
that every subsequent button will be out-of-place. However, instead of going
back to the first button, we attempt to take the easy way out by merely re-positioning
the latter buttons, but obviously to no avail.
Perhaps then our painful “constant chatter in the mind” is
trying to tell us, “You need to go back to the beginning to find the solution
that you have repressed.” Here is one hint regarding what we have repressed. Human
history demonstrates that, for the majority, whatever we do, we believe that we
are in the right and the others in the wrong. Why? We cannot face the feelings
of self-condemnation that we might have been in the wrong, at least partially.
Here is another hint to what we have repressed – We are
always trying to prove that we are good and morally deserving. We do this in
many ways – by surrounding ourselves with others who seem to believe this about
us, by our successes, attainments, and even by our hatred of a righteous God
who we sense condemns us. We hate criticism, failure, and anyone who will not
affirm us.
Why does all of this mean and why should we even care about
criticism, rejection, and failure, especially after we have attained the
approval of society? Because our conscience tells us that there is something
terribly wrong with us and our failures and rejections contradict our
self-serving self-talk.
Our conscience tells us what the entire Bible tells us –
that we are created in the moral likewise to God, we know when we fail the
standards of our conscience, and also know that we deserve condemnation. It is
therefore little surprise that some punish themselves to find momentary relief
from this awareness.
The solution to our problem is also hinted at through our relationships.
When we wrong someone, we find that when we sincerely apologize, we open the
door to the possibility of reconciliation. Even if the other party is unwilling
to accept our apology, we still feel somewhat unburdened, knowing that, at
least, we have done the right thing. Perhaps our every-day lives reflect
eternal truths – our relationship with our Creator. Perhaps we also need to be
reconciled to Him.
If we would only listen to our restless minds, they would
tell us that we need to make peace with our moral Creator who has written His
laws upon our conscience (Romans 2:14-16). How? By confessing our sins and by
finding His forgiveness and love:
·
Go, and proclaim these words toward the north,
and say, “‘Return, faithless Israel, declares the LORD. I will not look on you
in anger, for I am merciful, declares the LORD; I will not be angry
forever. Only acknowledge your guilt,
that you rebelled against the LORD your God and scattered your favors among
foreigners under every green tree, and that you have not obeyed my voice,
declares the LORD. Return, O faithless children, declares the LORD; for I am
your master… (Jeremiah 3:12-14)
Even though this God guarantees that if we confess our sins,
He will restore us (1 John 1:9), there is more to it than that. We also know
that because He is a moral God, He has moral requirements for our lives. But this
interferes with our own purposes. It means handing over the reins of our lifes
to Someone else. While, for me, this is a joy and a relief from the many
burdens I’ve carried, for others, this will feel like a violation, an invasion.
No wonder we scramble into the darkness of our own thinking.
But look at the price! When we reject God, we also reject
ourselves, the ones made in His likeness. We force ourselves to suppress unwanted
thoughts, the truths available to our mind, even our basic moral intuitions. We
have fled the moral demands of God in favor of the imprisonment of the mind, one
“despot,” for another despot, the one of our own creation.
But what happens when a light exposes our evil devices? To
His biological brothers, Jesus revealed:
·
“The world cannot hate you, but it hates me
because I testify about it that its works are evil.” (John 7:7)
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