At the root of all injustice lies a dream.
The dream presents a standard, and makes judgment possible. The dreamer judges himself by the standard of the dream, and then judges others by the same standard.
The dream is never inspired by what is, but what can be. The dream lies in the realm of the miraculous, which provides the power of its magic and enchantment. In the dream voices are allowed from another realm, which is why its inspiration seems divine.
The dream creates a new reality: The tension between what is and what can be. This tension is unbearable for the human soul, and it can only be conquered by one thing: Desire. Desire is the sweet voice that ensures the tension can be resolved. The distance between the dreamer and the fulfillment of the dream is eradicated by desire, for desire is the faith that promises to make the unreachable reachable.
When this judgment occurs, the dreamer leaves the path that he is on and ascends on the stairway of imagination offered by desire. The journey disengages the dreamer from his reality and allows him to escape into the nebulous world of the gods. Driven and energised by his desire, the dreamer takes the light at the end of the stairway as the standard for judging himself and others. He does not see that he has become inferior in his own estimation, and that the illusion of his future greatness is but a tranqualizer by which to suppress the horror of his nothingness in this world. He does not see that the world of goodness has been transformed into a prison of injustice by the power of his desire. Equality has been transferred to the top of the stairway, and justice becomes a crusade instead of a gift of the present.
There is only one antidote for the dark magic of desire’s fever and its hallucinations of injustice. It is to discard the dream and see God. God is not a dream, and he is not to be found in dreams. It is this one thing that separates him from the world of the false gods as expressed in images that aim to concretize the dreams of those on the stairway of desire.
God is in the present. His invisible attributes and divine power can be seen in the things he has made. God has made himself so visible that it is impossible to not see him. His life in all its goodness is around us all of the time. There is only one way to be blinded to God, and that is to turn him into a destiny, a dream, an accomplishment of the self’s ingeniousness. Idols are always imagined.
The serpent understood this, and that is how he beguiled Eve. Divinity was presented as a destiny. The present became the future. The contentment of all that she had was replaced by the desire of the one thing that was out of reach. The justice of creation’s fullness was replaced by the injustice of a single prohibition. Gratitude became offense. Fellowship became a dream. Unity became rivalry.
This is the curse of every human who does not see God. It is also the curse of those who claim to know God but have allowed the dream in their midst. This is true even of the church of Christ. When fellowship becomes a dream, it is destroyed. The enchantment of the dream is a bewitchment and a destruction of the real. The only church that will ever taste the fellowship and unity that exists in God alone is the one constituted by those who have died to the dream.
This death must first take place in the life of the individual before it can manifest in the life of the fellowship. Indeed, this is what it means to lose one’s life – to stop feeding on the image of an accomplished future self; to anticipate no future greatness in this world; to demand and expect no peace and comfort as this present age defines it. It is this collective death to aspiration that will bring the gathering of believers face to face with the glory that has already been bestowed on them as the church of God.
Unity that is constituted by a common dream and common vision, and expressed in a name that captures the essence of the commonality, falls apart when the anticipated penetration of the divine destiny fails to materialize. Its adherents will then be scattered like sheep without a shepherd. Such a church will be revealed as a daughter of Babel, not the Bride of Christ.
The true bride rejoices in the presence of the groom. She loves him in the here and now, and she does so with all of her being. She is immune to the voices of other lovers and the lust of desire for their images. She is content with his provisions. She rejoices in his love. She sees him as just, and shares in his justice. She becomes just as he is just. She loves as she is loved. And so she remains with him forever.
Oh God, when every dream fails; when all anticipation is revealed to be but the dust of death; it is then when we return to you. Forgive us our idolatries and the imaginations they have inspired. You are the treasure in the field. You are the pearl of great price. Who do we have in heaven but you? And on earth we desire nothing but you. You are our shepherd. We shall not want.
naturalchurch mill m’mm 
Thank you Tobie! Wow, I will have to read this again and let it sink in….and then ask myself a few questions.
Hi Anne-Marie. Thanks for the comment. That’s exactly the idea. It’s intended as a meditation, not a quick read. So you got it! 🙂
Exactly my feelings, and there I was thinking I’m stupid lol. It’s like a parable, with many searching implications.
Hi Errol – if you’re stupid, I don’t know where that leaves the rest of us…
You give me hope, Johanna, hope Johanna… lol
Thank you, Tobie! I started reading this and then stopped so I could come back to it and give it the time it deserved. I just read it through, slowly, one phrase and sentence at a time and didn’t move on until I grasped what you were saying with each line. This is profound and peals back the layers of the onion to get to the hidden core of our union with God and one another! Beautifully written!!
In pondering what you wrote, I was also brought into a further insight and confirmation that I thought I’d share as an encouragement. I was brought back to the Ten Commandments, the foundation of all justice, and reconsidered the first four of them in the light of what you wrote. First, have no other gods before Him (no “divine dreams”.) Second, make no false images (idolatrous imaginations) and bow down to them. Third, do not misuse the name of the Lord (by making Him into a “dream”). And fourth, keep the sabbath holy (enter into the rest of what He has already done and to given us in Hmself.) Amen! I don’t think I’ll ever see those commandments the same again! Thank you!!!
Now I will go back and read it again! 🙂
Blessings, brother.
Oh wow, David. So good to hear from you, and so amazing to see how you applied this to the first 4 commandments. This blessed me unbelievably, and I’m going to reread it. And reread it… Sheesh, isn’t Scripture amazing! Love you brother.
Weekly posts? Early Christmas? or side effects of being kept indoors 🙂 Either way it is dearly appreciated!
Haha. Hi Marinus. I’ve recently completed a study project, so my time is slightly more flexible. Still pondering your profound comment the other day, btw.
Beautiful Tobie! Thank you for speaking this truth, reminding the saints of The One Thing – the Person, the Purpose, the Passion of God – our Head – Jesus Christ. Yes, giving up our dreams, our wish dreams as Dverne Fromke puts it beautifully. As another said, if we fix our eyes on the church we lose Christ, if we fix our eyes on Christ, we get the church. The continuing call to death and subsequent experience of resurrection in the daily lives of individual saints and corporate, reminds me of the Psalm that says … the Lord delights in the death of His saints… Ps 116:15. Not just our physical relocation from this life to the next but our continual embracing of the cross, the same way our Master lived on earth and as is His whole character and existence in the Godhead. Whom have we in heaven but You Lord? There is nothing on earth we desire but You! Amen. Bless you brother 👍🏼
Thanks, Donna. So true. Makes me think of Spurgeon’s words: I looked at Jesus, and the dove of peace flew into my heart. I looked at the dove of peace, and it flew away. Blessings to you.
Not to mention the wars among us due to desire…
James 4:1 Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires that war in your members?
Absolutely. All conflict arises from our inability to keep the tenth commandment, which sprouts from the distorted idea that equality is to conform to some or other societal norm.
I am wrestling with desire in marriage. It seems to be the one thing that I cannot get on the altar. Not referring to bedroom stuff by the way. Everything else in my life is squarely at the feet of Jesus. Except my love for my wife. And to be fair. Some days this is a great blessing. Other days it’s killing me. This is one of those parts where salvation is particularly narrow.
Dear, I feel for you. I have been that road. I had to forgo the one I loved because the church elder told me that it is not God’s will that I marry her. And after my greatest fastings and pleas to God, I still had to marry a woman who was not physically attractive to me. Furthermore, she had a very different temperament and a very different way of thinking and doing things. And I suffered from Bipolar depression which made things really worse. I hated her and even told her so. But then!!!! Have you read the sentences that start with “BUT GOD” in the Bible? I would ask you not to place anything on the altar. What I have felt is that whatever “we” place on the altar “we” will take back at a moment of crisis. Remember Peter? He laid his life on the altar before the moment of crisis came but he also took it very easily from the altar at the moment of crisis. Later he became a Martyr!!! What was the difference now? “THE SPIRIT OF GOD”. The Gospel provides us a “mysterious supernatural working” of the Spirit of Christ in us whereby what is “natural” about us is “overshadowed” as in the case of Mary ( mother of Jesus, Luke 1:35 ) and something “supernatural” is brought out and manifested to the world outside. What you are facing ( the poverty in spirit as in Mathew 5 ) is the first step of experiencing the Holy Spirit as the Husband for your wife!!! And your mourning will be comforted by the great comforter ( 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 ) and you will be comforting others with the same comfort you received. Trying to squeeze “love” out of yourself would be like trying to squeeze milk from the breast of a barren cow. Only blood will come and the pain related to it kills!!! The Holy Spirit will pour out His love into you and through you out to your wife as “He becomes her husband through you.” But before it happens you will have to stop getting things into the altar. That is self-effort! You will have to learn how to rest in God and cast ( just as you throw away a stone ) your burdens on Him and you will know the supernatural love blossoms in you and through you. The yoke of Christ is easy to carry!!! 🙂 God led me through this point of crisis and helped me through 2 books.
1) https://www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/school_of_christ_the.html
2) http://articles.ochristian.com/article12821.shtml
The thing that is foolishness to the natural man BUT is the wisdom of God is what will help us in all states of barrenness. The mysterious working ( mystery ) which is unexplainable but real in experience!! ( https://biblehub.com/1_corinthians/2-7.htm ) in God’s answer for Man’s barrenness. I still remember the agony I had after years of trying “to die”, and “surrender”, and “place things on the altar” ending up in a mental hospital taking shock treatments, and walking like zombie for weeks due to heavy drugs. I could not even recognize my wife and daughter when they visited me forget loving!!!! LOL!!!!! When I finally came to consciousness the only thing I remembered was these verses from an old song called “A Tout Le Monde” by Megadeth.
Don’t remember where I was
I realized life was a game
THE MORE SERIOUSLY I TOOK THINGS
THE HARDER THE RULES BECAME!!!!!!!!!!!!
I had no idea what it’d cost
My life passed before my eyes
I FOUND OUT HOW LITTLE I ACCOMPLISHED!!!
All my plans denied
And then finally after much agony the relief I experienced when it dawned on me that I died about 18 years back but the preaching of “Dogs” ( Philippians 3 ) is what blinded me from that truth ( 2 Corinthians 4:4 ). Great missionaries have gone through what you go through now!! Rejoice!!!! 🙂 For example.
1. Hudson Taylor found he could not produce faith will all the spiritual disciplines and exercises he had learned to do even as a missionary and found out later that he need not produce faith!!! ( https://www.wholesomewords.org/missions/biotaylor11.html
2. Norman Grubb found that he could not love anybody even as a missionary but found out that he need not produce love!!! ( https://zerubbabel.org/intercessor-article/god-is-love/ )
May God brings you to His Rest mentioned in Hebrews 4:10 by which you will experience seated with Him as in Hebrews 1 & 2. 🙂
Much Love & Prayers!!
Hi Marinus. I have been thinking about your comment. I see my friend Siju from India has responded to you. If ever I have come across an individual whose life has been revolutionised by the Biblical message of the exchanged life, then it is Siju’s. Coupled with this, he has a rare gift of expressing majestic truths in a profound manner without (seemingly) realising that he is doing so. He is a great conversational partner, and I always appreciate his input. I am hoping to publish his testimony on the blog.
One thing that I thought of whilst pondering your comment: Why is there such a huge universal discrepancy between the anticipation and the pay-off in romantic relationships? It seems that in this area, more than anywhere else, humans are seduced by the notion that the feelings that got them into the commitment are the very feelings that will sustain them throughout the commitment.
The alarming divorce rate presents the biggest evidence that this is not the case. So the question that comes to mind is this: What is love, if not that magical enchantment that makes a person think that he/she has entered the realm of the eternal bliss of the gods?
My first temptation is to become deep and philosophical, and to speak about the different types of love, and to cite Lewis’ The Four Loves or Nygren’s Eros and Agape or Kierkegaard or Fromm or anyone of the great love theorists of the past few centuries.
But maybe one should simply turn to a simple sentence in the Bible: “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church…”
So how did Christ love me? I’m pretty convinced that he was not infatuated; that his world did not stop spinning because of the prospect of entering into me and finding some satisfaction in the process. I think he saw in me not a source to be enjoyed for his own good and potential contentment, but a recipient on which he could lavish the life that had been surging in and through him since the dawn of eternity. And I strongly suspect that the reward linked to the giving of that life had to do with the replenishing that came from the Father, a delight that far surpassed any benefit that could ever be procured by scratching around in the barren shell that is me, as though I contained some treasure somewhere that needed to be unearthed for his enjoyment.
This may explain why it is more blessed to give than receive, for it is in the perpetual giving that the fullness of the Father is experienced. It also suggests that to love my wife as Christ loved the church is an infinitely more satisfying exercise than loving my wife because of her perfect compliance to my demands and expectations.
If this is true, then it means we have greatly misunderstood the purpose of the wife as expressed in the words “it is not good for man to be alone.” Our traditional understanding is that the miserableness of the single male has to do with a type of loneliness that needed to be serviced by the delightful company of the woman, and that such service depended on the uninterrupted meeting of a myriad of needs that are associated with solitude. And so she is perceived to be the “helper” in the sense that she can function as a source of sorts to fill the vacuum of the solitary man’s existence.
If the man is to love the woman as Christ loved the church, then the undesirability of the man’s aloneness can only mean one thing: It is not good for him to be alone because he has no one to give his life to. As such, he is excluded from the infinite joy of having the life of God constantly fill him and flow through him. He is like the Dead Sea, with no outlet, rather than the Sea of Galilee that is vibrant with life for the simple reason that it gives whatever it receives. His fountain is blocked, which is what uncircumcision signifies.
To deliver him from this dreaded state, he requires a recipient who can draw from him, not a supposed source that should fill him. He already has a source, which is evident from the account of creation. There is a river that flows through a mysterious place called Eden, and God plants a garden in the east of this place to deliver the river from the burden of life it is carrying. The moment the river enters the garden it breaks into four branches, and its life is distributed. From there it is transferred to the trees in the garden, and the design of the tree mimics the design of the river: The flow of life, the distribution of life, the transfer of life. The tree produces fruit and oxygen, and God creates the man to eat the fruit and draw the oxygen from the tree into his lungs, which mimics the design of the trees.
It is not good for the river to be alone, and the Lord God creates a garden to enable the river to give its life so as to constantly receive it from God. It is not good for the trees to be alone, and the Lord God creates a creature to receive its life. It is not good for the creature to be alone, and the Lord God creates the woman to enable the flow of life from him to her. And, of course, it is not good for the woman to be alone, and God creates the child to be the recipient of her life.
The fall interrupts the flow of life between each of these links, and replaces the delight of giving with the pain of wanting. Creation groans. Food can only be accessed in the sweat of one’s brow. The woman desires her husband, for his life no longer flows freely to her. Birth becomes painful. The life-giving branch becomes the life-taking thorn. The need for circumcision arises: The removal of the flesh that blocks the flow of life.
Desire is birthed as the yearning for life, and it becomes the curse that destroys relationships. Love is no longer defined as the giving of life, but as the thrill of seeking it.
What is regeneration other than the return of God’s life to the individual, and the ability to let that life flow to others? Christ modeled it, and we are to emulate it. That is the great mystery of Christ and the church – a mystery that reveals the eternal purpose of marriage, and the role of the husband and the wife in it.
Just a few thoughts…