Seeking the Kingdom of God

"But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, 

and all these things shall be added unto you."

Matthew 6:33

This is a favorite promise for many Christians to quote. Taken by itself, out of context, the verse has two main questions:

What does it mean to seek "the Kingdom of God" first?

and

What are "all these things"?

The second question is easiest to answer because we can simply look earlier in the chapter. This comes at the end of Matthew chapter 6 right after Jesus is telling us not to worry about what to eat or what to wear because God feeds the sparrows and God clothes the lilies, how much more will he clothe and feed us? In other words, "all these things" is referring to our basic needs in life. Jesus is saying here that if we focus first on the Kingdom of God then our basic needs will naturally be provided.

So what does it mean to seek "the Kingdom of God" first? 

This is a bit more challenging to answer, not because it is difficult to find the answer but because there are several different ways to approach the answer. I approached it in one way in my post from 2015 titled Four Ways We Should Seek Him First!. In this post I discuss four general methods of how to seek His Kingdom first, through prayer, finances, service, and evangelism. Lately God has been bringing me back to this verse with some more thoughts on what the focus of our seeking should be. What is the Kingdom of God in practical terms? He actually brought a connection in my heart between this passage and another one that we don't always connect.

"Then the King will say to those on His right hand, 'Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.'

Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? When did we see You a stranger and take you in, or naked and clothe You? Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to you?' 

And the King will answer and say to them, 'Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did to the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.'"

Matthew 25:34-40

Notice there is some similar language here in his passage. Right at the beginning the "King" says, "Come... inherit the kingdom". Which shows that we are continuing to talk about how to get a kingdom. Jesus then later calls this group of people, "righteous" which correlates with seeking after righteousness in the first verse.

When noticing that the two passages are talking about similar things we can read on and see what it actually means to seek after the Kingdom. Jesus tells them that what they do to the "least of these" they do to Him. This is how you seek after the Kingdom. If you search this verse on Google several articles come up discussing, "Who are the Least of These?" It seems silly to me that you would need an entire article on that question though because Jesus lists them out right in the verse. They are:

Those who are hungry
Those who are thirsty
Strangers - also could be translated foreigners
The naked
The sick
Those in prison

The interesting thing is that it does not specify any type of moral standing for any of these individuals. When he talks about visiting people in prison he doesn't say that they have to be wrongfully accused. When he talks about people who are hungry or thirsty he doesn't say they have to be working as hard as they possibly can and still be hungry or thirsty. He basically lists anyone with a need and says, if you fill this need for this person then you are doing it for me.

If you are familiar with this passage then you also know that this is one of the most defining splits between people in the Bible. The "King" calls those who are doing these things to "inherit the kingdom" and he tells those who are not to, "Depart from Me". This shows that our actions in this regard are paramount to our Christian life.

What are you doing to help the "least of these" today?

Is Our Independence Killing Us?

"And the Lord God said, "It is not good that man should be alone; 

I will make him a helper comparable to him."

Genesis 2:18

Lately, there have been a lot of high profile suicides. The most recent were Anthony Bourdaine and Kate Spade, back in 2014 it was Robin Williams and there are many others. It seems that suicide is on the increase but these high profile suicides are simply bringing attention to an epidemic that goes deeper in our society than we care to realize. 

The natural question in the midst of unexplained tragedy is, "Why?"

So we as a society are left to question "Why?" One myth that has immediately been debunked b these high profile suicides is that depression only happens when someone fails. Just looking at these three that I named you can see that they are some of the most successful people in their fields. They were people that others in their field looked up to and attempted to emulate so clearly it was not failure that caused them to give up on life. 

Our goal-oriented, capitalistic, independent society has fed us with the lie that success is the most important thing in life.

We are all taught to strive for success. Even when we are taught that failure isn't so bad it is because we can learn from failure and better succeed but what happens when we finally do succeed? Where do we go from there? 

A one-track mind after success may make us successful but it ultimately leaves us alone.

When God created the heavens and the earth he then created Adam and gave it all to Adam. It's an interesting story when you think about it because Adam never had to strive for success, he had it from the beginning. He never had to strive for a relationship with God and was closer than any other human (other than Jesus) has ever been to God. Yet there was still something missing. God, Himself, declared that it was not good for Adam to be alone. 

The idea that, "All I need is Jesus" is not Biblical.

It sounds very holy to say, "All I need is Jesus!" but it's not Biblical. Think about it. Adam had more of God than any of us could possibly have, sin had not yet entered the world and created a barrier between him and God, and yet God said he was alone and that it wasn't good. We were made to be social creatures. We were made to be dependent on each other. 

American society is built on independence, on doing it ourselves. Even our national day is called Independence Day. We shame people who live with their parents too long and we have given a negative connotation to the word 'dependent'. But here's the thing, we are all dependent on others whether we like it or not. We need each other. We need relationship. 

So what can we do to help prevent depression and suicide?

I'm not saying it is the end all solution but we can start by building relationship with those around us. Make sure that you don't distract yourself so much on your pursuit towards success that you alienate yourself, and if you see someone doing that, make it a point to reach out to them. Ultimately, don't go at it alone and don't let those around you be alone either.

Defense of the Biblical View of Self

"Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."

1 Thessalonians 5:23

Most of you, if you read my blog, either already know or have figured out that I have been going back to school. This is why my posts have been a lot more sporadic the last few years because my time has been spent on my assignments. There have been a couple of posts that I have done based off of assignments in school such as this discussion post and this post presenting some general thoughts about the intersection of science, religion, and belief. Even my last post was inspired by a video I had to watch for school last term.

This term I have been taking a course on Consciousness. I didn't really know what to expect and honestly signed up for the course simply to satisfy my last psychology requirement for my major but it has been interesting. One of the main topics has been the concept of self. Many philosophers and scientists have argued against the existence of a unified self beyond our physical brain. They have stated that consciousness in itself is an illusion. Of course, as a Christian who believes the Bible I can not agree with that. Right at the beginning in Genesis we see that we were made in the image of God and throughout the Bible God shows us that he made each of us special and unique. In fact the Bible describes us as three part beings in the spirit, soul, and body. Of course one of the challenges of having these discussions in a secular university is that you can't really use the Bible as a reputable source. 

If someone doesn't believe the Bible then how do you defend a Biblical idea?

Well, my professor challenged me to do just that and I took the challenge. Below I thought I would share with all of you my midterm essay which was an attempt to present an academic defense of the Biblical view of self. I would love to hear from you what you think. Do you have any ideas of how I could have improved it? 

An Academic Defense of the Biblical Self

One idea addressed, that is important to me, is the idea of self. Who am I? Do I even exist or am I just an illusion created by the bundle of working neurons in my brain? I addressed this question a bit already in my last assignment but you challenged me to think about how I would defend my position and I felt like this is as good a place to attempt that as any. Admittedly this will be challenging because I can say right off the bat that my belief in self is rooted deeply in my belief in God and in the Bible. This means that some of the same challenges that come with attempting to defend God's existence will be present in my attempt to defend my position on the existence of self.

As a Christian, my theory already is lumped together in the category of ego theories because, as the book states, Christianity believes in the soul as central to the self (Blackmore, 2012). Ego theory in it's core addresses the feeling that we are a continuous entity as truth. Why do we feel like we are a unified self? Because we are! (Blackmore, 2012) Ultimately this echoes my own belief. I believe that our feeling of self, of uniqueness, is because we truly are unique and our self truly does exist. This has been the prevailing belief for most of the existence of humanity and my feeling is that until we have proof that it is not true we have no need to go against what seems like common sense.

One thing that I have noticed about science is that scientists have a tendency to attempt to explain away anything that does not have scientific proof, any mystery. For example, I feel that the "Big Bang Theory" is an attempt to explain away the mystery of the start of our universe without recognizing that there is no way to truly understand how the universe started unless we traveled back in time and observed it directly ourselves. When I took my astronomy course over and over again it was shown how science would attempt to explain the mystery of a faraway planet or moon before we were able to observe it. Then we would observe it and it would be entirely different then we thought. Then, of course, through observation, science was able to explain why it was how it was. To me the bundle theory of self is one of these attempts to explain away a mystery. Because no one can see the self, and there is no scientific proof of an unified self, then some philosophers and scientists have taken it on themselves to explain away this self. Bundle theory, in it's simplest form, says that the unified self is an illusion and that we are simply a bundle of neurons that create this illusion and causes us to feel like we are a unified self (Blackmore, 2012).

So in other words, my premise in the idea of self is similar to William James. James said that our feeling of a unified self is central to the concept of who we are and who we identify as (Blackmore, 2012). Though I understand that our feelings can betray us as humans, my starting question is, Why deny that the self exists if every human being in the history of the world seems to agree that it feels as though it does? In fact it is so ingrained in our beliefs that it is built into our languages and how we describe things. The book even points out that scientists who are attempting to describe a theory in which the self is an illusion will often fall into pitfalls in which they describe things as if the self does exist (Blackmore, 2012). To me, this in itself is evidence of the existence of a unified self.

As stated before, my personal theory of self is based on my understanding of the Bible. First and foremost I believe the Bible when it states that we were created by God in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). God is presented in the Bible as a triune God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19) If we were made in His image then it would only make sense that we were also made as triune beings. The Bible presents our three parts as body, soul, and spirit (Hebrews 4:12; Galatians 5:16). Our spirit is our consciousness, the little voice inside telling us what we should do, what is right, what is moral. Our body, also referred to as our flesh, is our natural desires, our desires that are not bad in themselves but if allowed to rule us lead us down a path we shouldn't go, and our soul is our mind, our rationality. All three make up ourselves but ultimately the body is the least important part because our body is not eternal.

This theory explains the problem of the feeling of a central, unified self in the same way all ego theories do, by saying it exists. There is an explanation in regards to the idea of multiple selves as I believe that the body is ultimately a "house" for the central self of the spirit and soul. In the same way it can be used as a house for other spirits if we allow it to be. This is the concept of demonic possession and oppression. I also believe that it solves the problem presented by one of my classmates of "voices in our head" or the "devil and angel" phenomenon, because the spirit is our central morality, our "angel", and the flesh is our natural, carnal desires, often our "devil". Our soul is then caught in between listening to both sides and rationalizing between the two sides.

I know that I still have not presented any hard evidence of the existence of a soul or a spirit other than the evidence we have already discussed, that we feel that they exist. But I guess my question is, Is that truly a problem? Right at the beginning of the textbook it was presented that there were three ideas in regard to the mind-body problem; that it exists and we need to understand it, that it exists but we will never understand it, and that it doesn't exist at all (Blackmore, 2012). I guess when it comes to the problem of the existence of self I am of the second mindset. I believe the self exists but that we will never be able to prove it. At least not until we are in the after life and our central self has gone on to another place.

Blackmore; Susan. (2012). Consciousness, Second Edition An Introduction. Abingdon, Oxon: Taylor & Francis