The Psychology of Salvation, Part 9: Who Needs the Sanctuary?

Retrieved 11/28/12 from: http://graphicnovel.zachwhalen.net/sites/graphicnovel.zachwhalen.net/files/monalisa.jpg  

“Who needs the sanctuary? Don’t you believe in the New Covenant?” It was my new evangelical friend Clyde talking. “None of that stuff is binding on us today.” I had to agree, but I reasoned that God didn’t make a mistake when He designed a graphic guide to the process of salvation. If God designed it, what was He trying to teach us by its symbols? The fact that we are under the New Covenant doesn’t make me quit contemplating the story of Adam and Eve, or the travails of Job, or the decisions of the Judges, or the warnings of the prophets, or the poetry of David.

“Who needs the sanctuary?” It is a question that some Adventists also ask. Others don’t ask the question, they just don’t think about it at all. It seems dry and outdated. Some, wrestle with the sanctuary for theological reasons. Some try to find in it the answers to eschatological questions. As I child I was used to people referring to the sanctuary as a way to defend our belief in the investigative judgment, or to create a picture of Christ’s high priestly ministrations on our behalf. I always had the feeling of half cringing under the sheer weight of conviction among the speakers who could be quite argumentative. Studying or discussing the sanctuary did indeed seem like a dry, obscure pursuit; right up there with the precise meaning of the seven seals of Revelation or the exact order and proximity of end-time events.

So I have been one of those who wandered off when a sanctuary debate started to heat up, but those debates are very rare today. I would not speak against trying to understand the sanctuary, nor would I see the grappling as a waste of time, but I do think there is another way to appreciate the sanctuary.

I think we can compare our interest in the sanctuary to the Mona Lisa; it’s classical, everyone should be aware that it existed, it’s hung on a wall somewhere safely outside our daily experience, so who cares? People argue about the Mona Lisa, too. Was there some kind of fooling around going on? Was it a portrait of da Vinci’s gay lover? Was it a self-portrait where he styled himself as a woman? Was it his father, one of two men who may have commissioned the painting? Was it, perhaps, even Lisa del Giocondo as it is supposed to be? There are at least 12 plausible theories. But what percent of the world’s population is thinking about the Mona Lisa right now? What small handful are holding any opinion about her?

Let’s say the three people who are arguing for their viewpoints stop to take a breath and I look around their shoulders and spy her. I am not versed in the arguments, but I am taken with the smile people have called enigmatic. I notice that she smiles more when I look at her eyes than when I look at her mouth. I tap one of the aficionados and ask, “Where can I get a copy of that? I have an open space on a wall at home that is the right color and shape. She’d look fabulous there.”

He shrugs and suggests, “Check the gift shop. They can probably even print it on canvas for you.” That’s the end of his patience with my interruption, and he turns back to the debate. But I do buy the canvas print. I pay good money to have it framed, and I carefully place it on my wall. Each day I walk by, and she seems to watch me with mild interest. I study her face. I try to make sense of the background, but mostly I just get happier and happier with my purchase. I know little about da Vinci, but I feel that if he showed up tomorrow, we’d have much to talk about.

It’s that way with the sanctuary. You can objectify it, study its details, argue it, search it for clues as to the future, but if you don’t see the beauty in it, you have missed much. It is one of the clearest presentations of a God Who has done it all for us, Who sets our worldview straight, and Who personally coaches us in our new life. It reveals the great universal engine which turns everything. It’s beautiful and encouraging. You can love the sanctuary in a way that draws you to its Artist.

The Psychology of Salvation, Part 8: Our Hands Are Bigger Now

Found 11/28/12 at: http://fionaevemurray.wordpress.com/projects/project-3/

Woke up at 2:30 this morning to break a 29-year, no-vomiting record. (I’m assuming that I vomited when Sherry and I were so wretchedly sick in Nordland in the early '80s.. Not sure of the year, and I might not have even vomited then. I have a way of sitting in misery for the duration.)

Throughout the night I drifted back into consciousness three times in very similar ways. I awoke from dreams where only the thin-slice of the dream’s fading end was remembered. In each one I was looking at a model of the Hebrew sanctuary and said something like, “Lord, they seem to be doing all You have asked.”

His reply was along the lines of, “They are missing the heart of it. They could take it to a deeper place in their lives.”

In each of the three dreams I was viewing the tabernacle from a different angle. On my third awakening, I could only remember two of the perspectives. In the first, I was looking at a model similar to the one at the Israel Museum. In fact, I believe that dream featured Herod’s temple. My perspective was oblique and from the altitude of a small private airplane. I was gazing from the southeast, near the south end of the Mount of Olives.

The second perspective was like seeing the desert tabernacle all laid out on a slope with the furniture exposed. The scale and angle were just as if I were playing a pinball machine and all the furniture were the bumpers and flippers. However, I was not playing; I could see priests officiating appropriately at each station.

I couldn’t remember the third perspective. Then when I awoke a fourth time my memory was restored. In it, the temple and its furniture were all laid out in a flat diagram. I seemed to be seeing it on a page in a textbook.

As soon as I remembered the third perspective, they all made sense to me. 1) The museum model of the temple stood for the central place the worship of Shaddai held in the Hebrew culture, beliefs, and economy. It was a proper view of its pivotal position as God ordained it for the nation. 2) The pinball view of the tabernacle and its furniture signified the physical precision with which the tabernacle was built and the close attention to detail during the daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly rounds. 3) The textbook diagram was emblematic of a very rational study of the whole system. All perspectives were fascinating, yet God insisted, “There’s more,” and implied that when the “more” is missed we miss the best part.

I felt impressed that I should get back to devotional writing about God’s love as shown in the sanctuary, and that it contains a psychological model of His work for our salvation. Is that what was happening? I don’t know. It could have been my fascination with this study after having let lie dormant for awhile. After all, I had just talked to Brandy’s prayer group hours before the dreams began. So recounting the trip to Jerusalem may have dislodged some sleeping interests. It could have been stimulated by the fever I was fighting off and on, but I didn’t feel emotional or excited, just calm and convinced.

Either way, in the wee small hours I decided that I would return to sanctuary or other devotional writing in the coming days. Then I drifted back to sleep. I woke up a fifth time and this time the perspective seemed to mix the three models. I definitely saw all the pieces and the priests bustling about their service in the tabernacle; I was aware of the temple’s place in the nation’s daily and international life; and I had full appreciation for the logic and the details.

Again, as the brief image faded, I found myself answering a comment God must have just made. I said, “Lord, they are doing it all right.”

Again, He calmly and clearly disagreed, “When they were children, their hands were too small for the big basins, the plates, the censors, the tongs, and all the rest. They had to focus very carefully not to drop something. Now, even though their hands are bigger, they are stuck performing the same routines they have learned so well. Their hands are big enough now to carry this practice into a new chamber in their lives and to make it work seamlessly there, but they aren’t.”

I found this thought to be quite exciting for three reasons: 1) God was using “hands” to stand for both the physical work (a symbol we traditionally keep) but He was also using it for our mind and soul’s ability to “grasp” what is significant. As humans we have invented many titles for ourselves and one is homo fabere which means we are the only species to fabricate things. I’m sure that title has been challenged now by Darwin’s finches and the primates that create termite-fishing sticks. However, we have long believed that our manual dexterity has enriched our exploration of the world around us, fueling more mental activity and inquisitiveness. Our hand’s ability to create what the mind invents gives wings to the mind. Why wouldn’t the hand’s learning of a routine give the mind further thoughts to explore? Why do we sometimes allow the hands to go through the motions day after day and block our minds from abstracting and internalizing what is going on? 2) This statement about the hands seemed to be a particularly Jewish part of the dream. The Jews believe that the head, hand, and soul must stay connected. That’s why the praying Jew’s body is active pacing or rocking while his or her mind and soul interact with God. 3) And finally, the statement points out that our care and attention to detail as we learn things correctly is only a step towards application. When we get stuck on the correct performance of a routine, we display the behaviors of obsessive compulsion. Statement: “We’ve gotta do this!” Question: “Why? What is it adding to our life or understanding?” Answer: “We’ve gotta keep doing this right.”

What I hear as I write this is the added thought, “The temple was glorious before, but it will shine even more brightly. When it is ingested, it will disappear for a time, but then it will burst forth with the light of a life creatively and faithfully lived.”

I wouldn’t be so bold as to say God has told me to write this, but I do know that one way or the other I feel compelled to write it… bit by bit, piece by piece. I need to write faithfully and devotionally for my own soul’s sake.

All of this comes at a somewhat spiritually dry time for me. It’s wonderful being close to family. My wife is lovely. We aren’t in the poorhouse yet despite the diminished income and the cost of maintaining two homes. I am making progress on my studies. But I also feel that my worship times have become more like study than communion. Fewer things are in my control, so I’m grumpier than Ginger has previously experienced. I am suspicious of the builder, the home owners association, the loan company, and maybe even “the stranger that is within my gates.” I state my opinions more emphatically and am readier to battle with alternate viewpoints, than to listen to them and to think compassionately.

So how does one write from a state of communion rather than combativeness? What does devotional obedience mean? I may produce a string of loosely-jointed, rambling pieces, fit for no one else, but me. Still, I will write when, how, and whatever it seems I should write. I made this promise three weeks ago, then I got lost in Scripture study that left little “juice” for my soul. So my supplementary commitment is to let God meander through my house and point out whatever He may. If He wants me to “sit a spell” I will do that, and I won’t move on until He does.

The Psychology of Salvation, Part 7: Accidental Temptation

Follow this link for a fascinating article on brain communication WITHOUT synapse! http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2009/10/29-02.html 

So how do we put this psychology of salvation to work for us? Being careful to remember that we can’t save ourselves, the Sanctuary does provide many encouraging images of what happens in our head, heart, and body along this twisted and dusty road we travel. Here’s one such encouragement.

I’ve been asking God to show me His beauty in familiar passages of Scripture which are now seen afresh through the Sanctuary model. During my run yesterday I was praying and working on Scripture memorization, and in less than two strides I found myself in the middle of a lascivious thought. I cried out in agony, “Oh Lord! I am no longer amused nor entertained by such thoughts. Why do they keep coming back? When will You liberate me? I’m more than eager to have them permanently gone.”

What followed was not a great answer to the whole sin problem, but it did provide some insight into these drive-by temptations. First, I remembered what Roland Hegsted said in an Auburn campmeeting address back in the 1980s. It offered some very rational encouragement back then. He said he had been gifted with a creative mind. It is constantly at work, and he can’t predict what it will spin out next. Even in the middle of church or the middle of a prayer, his mind will grab a word or a gesture and run with it, creating all kinds of potential spin-offs. While some of them are helpful, even publishable, some of them are inappropriate — immoral and repugnant.

He used to be horribly discouraged by this, but then learned to chalk it up to his fertile imagination and creative energy. He came to see that he had no control over what would pop to mind in the next instant, but he did have total control over what he would dwell on. This was a comforting thought to me back then since my mind works the same. But yesterday it took on a new depth as I pondered a familiar Bible passage in the light of the Sanctuary.

Remember that the Holy Place, our inner life where the Holy Spirit illuminates and educates us, is internally decorated with beautifully embroidered curtains. It is a safe place conducive to a focus on themes eternal. But we can be enticed to part the curtain and look back at life outside the veil. Despite the beauty of the spiritual life, our former life still beckons us, and we find ourselves responding before we realize it.

So what to do? Can we block the video feed from crazy creative brains? To do that would either be impossible or would require some kind of lobotomy or eye extraction from which we would not recover, and by which even our spiritual life would be crippled. Yes, Jesus said, “If your eye offends you, pluck it out.” But He also said that we were to live in this world (presumably with all our faculties in full health) but not join in the pursuits of the world.

Well, I found this encouraging bridge between Hegsted and the Sanctuary in James 1:12-15. Notice the theme of our active engagement in the process of salvation (a Holy Place effort), but pay special attention to the matter of temptation.

Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him. When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

It suddenly clicked for me: our minds are still composed of all the elements and habits of this world. Yes, we are longing to “be transformed by the renewing of [our] mind” (Romans 12:2), but we still have the basic equipment, that “old man” Paul talks about. Our own minds are one more part of the scenery in our lives and there is some pretty deeply etched graffiti in our brains. But more than that, our minds actively invent and create, churning out thoughts constantly. Just like a good brainstorming session, our brains produce copiously and leave it to us to sort the gold from the garbage.

Some of the garbage is not enticing to us, and some is nearly irresistible. Here’s an example. Sometimes I think of song lyrics and this morning I was humming “in celestial like strains it unceasingly falls o’er my soul like an infinite gong.” (I know, the word is “calm.” I just looked it up! But all these years I thought it was “gong!” I used to think, “That’s not too restful-sounding, but a gong does reverberate for a long time. Oh well.”)

Anyway, due to my (until this very moment) misunderstanding, that song often came off as “o’er my soul like an infinite bong.” My brain just kept making the joke all by itself. I would laugh an annoyed little “Harrumph”, and go back to correct the word in my mind. That’s because the drug culture doesn’t live in my bones. For some of my friends, the word “bong” would have sent them into shivers of desire for the chemical they have sworn off. For them, this little wordplay would have been horribly upsetting, because of its visceral enticement. It would have caused them to question their level of commitment, or to pray “Oh Lord! How long till I am free of these old desires?”

See the difference? For me, that little wordplay triggers nothing but annoyance. So it’s not the wordplay that is the problem. The problem arises because of what is lying half-dormant in the soul. 

That old appetite gets aroused from its rest deep in the soul of the former cannabis user. It responds to stimuli no matter where they come from. I have other appetites and memories; they get triggered by other spontaneously generated images. Those images would be a mere annoyance to someone else, but they awaken the beasts I have to subdue. So I cry out, “Oh Lord! How long?”

This is what James is talking about. We are in the Holy Place (our inner life) where the Spirit is ministering to us, and suddenly we are dragged away and enticed! (How rude!) It may have been an irreverent wordplay that distracted our attention, but when it finds an echo of desire welling up from our fallen past then the enticement begins.

Fortunately, at the very point where desire kicks in, so does our awareness of it. So we get to play gatekeeper to our continual thinking. Like a roving dog our creative mind sniffs out anything, but like a landowner with a shred of self-respect, we get to sort out what stays on our property.

In short, our creative mind generates many thoughts without pre-judging their value. When it strikes on an image that arouses an evil desire, then we feel the enticement and have to battle the beast in us. 

There is no harm in the thousands of unusual thoughts, but there is great harm in treating them all with continued interest. Some are to be welcomed, mulled over, maybe even published. Many more are to be recognized for the unhealthy allurement they offer and then kicked off the property.

Ironically, unlike your sneaky roving dog, the best way to keep the beast from frolicking on your lawn is to pay it no mind. “Turn your eyes upon Jesus…”