A New Perspective ...

You do not know what you do not know. We are finite creatures who have been conditioned to accept less than what is possible by an evil that is bent on our misery and ultimate destruction. It was never God’s intent that any sickness, blindness, disease, or addictive disorders would impact our lives and our souls. All of these maladies are a byproduct of evil. Death itself is a natural consequence of evil, as life is a natural consequence of God. But freedom from the shackles that have bound us, vision to see truth and beauty in a world that sees neither, and love poured out without measure are the hallmarks of a changed life; a life that has finally humbled itself and submitted its will to our Lord Jesus Christ.

Chemical additives (by this I mean recreational or even misused prescription drugs), cannot come close to offering you the experience of a liberated mind, heart, and soul. Endorphins that your body produces when you exercise strenuously are a mild alternative next to the feeling of freedom to the unbound heart. This is something new. This is something unheard of. This is truth and knowledge we have not had, for we stood in our own way of obtaining it. This is the experience and exhilaration that only comes when Christ sets you free from the chains of evil that have so long governed your life.

We spend so much time consumed with our sins. Either we are trying hard to avoid doing them again, or consumed with guilt after recently committing them again, or cleaning up the mess they cause – our lives, minds, and even prayers are consumed with living in bondage. In so doing, we have focused on the disease and not the cure. By turning them over to Jesus, by admitting that we actually like sin and evil and that without Christ changing our wicked core, we are doomed to continue in it – we are MADE free. Note that the work still belongs only to Him, but the freedom is far more liberating than you can imagine if you are still bound in sin. This freedom of the mind offers you an entirely NEW perspective.

There is an old computer axiom that states – “garbage in – garbage out”. Its meaning is that if you put in bad data or bad coding practices, you can expect to get inaccurate, misleading and false results. Evil has fed us nothing but garbage our whole lives and has told us we were eating cake. Take the scriptures for instance; the Old and New Testaments are considered by a great many believers to be very different from each other. Bill Maher’s famous joke line that … “having a kid seems to have mellowed out God” in the New Testament; is tacitly agreed to by many. This of course is not logically possible. God does not undergo a personality change, nor would we ever want Him to abandon the Good that He is for any alternative. So why the perception difference? It is because we view things with blurry vision, and prejudiced minds. The truth of God’s infinite love is all through the Old Testament writings, but is ignored in favor of the blood, guts, and errors of man that are so vividly described.

Many people non-believers accuse God of genocide because of the wars the Children of Israel waged on the inhabitants of the Promised land. But these wars were not God’s plan, they were made by Man’s interference with God’s ideas. God wanted to send in wasps to the promised land (plague style) to drive out the inhabitants of the land so that His people could just walk right in and settle down. No blood, no bodies, no genocide, and no wars that continued because the Israelites did not finish the job of driving their enemies out, instead getting lazy and having to contend with them for generations to come. But God’s idea about using wasps is long forgotten, next to the blood and gore of warring exploits.

People site the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as examples of the vindictive nature of God. Yet Christ Himself went to these two cities in the flesh before making a final decision of their destruction. And all those who were not guilty of their crimes were spared. This example of the ultimate extinction of evil was designed to remind us that evil is on a time clock. It will not be granted liberty to exist forever. Someday it will be fully consumed and disappear. Think of it, Sodom and Gomorrah are not STILL burning, their residents are NOT still tortured. They were burned up and dead. The place has been grown over, and the evil that existed there is NO more. This is not a story about an Angry God, it is a story about a God who one day offers us the hope of existence without evil, in both this life and one to come.

How you see the Bible depends much on your history with it, your parents views, your pastors views, and your own clouded desires. We often try to use the Bible to justify our decisions, or prove our doctrines are correct. This is a huge mistake. In so doing, we are attempting to lead the learning ourselves, instead of being led to the truth God would share with us in His word. Using the Bible to condemn the actions of others indicates a COMPLETE lack of understanding of the message of the Bible. This book is NOT about punishment and guilt. It is about freedom from pain, about reclamation of addicts, about reconciliation with a God who is suffering from a major case of empty-nest-syndrome. We have a Daddy who wants us home. This book is a love letter from cover to cover. It is real, not dressed up, or exaggerated, it shows the mistakes so that we can learn from them, not learn to repeat them. But this requires a new perspective to see. It requires a freedom from bondage. It requires a changing life, or I am guessing you have NO idea what I am talking about. Why not give up your will to Christ and see what happens in your own life …