Part Two
I
As the disciples began to follow Jesus, they were far from the finished product. In fact, they saw in Jesus the answer to their ambitious dreams of power and prestige. It was a long, painful journey for them that gradually freed them from the blindness of their self-centered ways. Jesus was constantly calling them to a place they found unsettling. Jesus was relentless in disrupting their complacency.
The movement away from a worldview centered on them in the spotlight and God offstage as an emergency support was aptly called “the road to Jerusalem.”
When we truly encounter the Word of God in the Bible, we will have the same challenging experience. This is always the case when we address a self-knowledge rooted in selfishness. This is our universal inheritance from our original parents.
A steady dosage of God’s Word will produce a frontal attack on all superficiality and bogus values that prop up a false self. This fundamental internal distortion energizes an unyielding pursuit for comfort and control. The Word of God is indeed the two-edged sword. It opens up that part of our life that we would rather keep hidden. Everything about the Bible is geared to transform our self-knowledge. It helps us abandon selfishness and to build up a life of self-giving love and healing presence. This is a journey to the true self that places God at the center.
If the Bible is only a source of comfort for us, we are losing the real treasure. The true Word of God, revealed in Jesus, is about our personal transformation through our death to selfishness and our rebirth to love and service. Growing in true knowledge of ourselves is an essential element of this new life.
It is our commitment to walk in the footsteps of Jesus.
When we enter a serious encounter with God’s Word in the Bible, we always bring extensive personal baggage. There are countless pitfalls in the sacred task of prayerful reading of the Bible. These three essential steps will be most helpful.
…..Listen to what God has to say to me;
…..Seek to learn God’s will;
…..Always be committed to walk with Jesus.
Exposing the hidden agenda of the disciples was a constant part of Jesus’ teaching. It is also part of our search for true discipleship. We are all caught in a cultural and economic captivity that pulls us constantly away from gospel values.
A prayerful reading of the Word of God clearly surfaces our internal conflict and turmoil. Deep personal change is set before us as a non-negotiable summons. This gospel call to conversion centers on self-knowledge. It is a process of seeing ourselves in a new way, the way that the light of Christ opens before us.
True faithfulness will slowly but steadily unveil a deeply entrenched selfishness and deceit. With gentle divine guidance, we will see things in a new way. We will be uprooted and set loose. The choices before us will slowly erupt with an enticing clarity. This will be the first step on a long journey.
It will eventually become evident that God’s plans never seem to be finished. Along the way, our self-knowledge will be slowly transformed as we embrace a new freedom.
Teresa of Avila never tired of talking about the importance of self-knowledge. She knew well that growing in honest self-knowledge transported us into a humble and totally life-giving presence to God. The key is humility, the ability to accept ourselves as creatures utterly dependent on an all-powerful, all-loving and all-merciful Creator God. This is the true passage from the dominance of the ego, and its destructive false self, to the true self.
“Oh, but if it is in the room of self-knowledge! How necessary this room is – see that you understand me – even for those who the Lord has brought to the very dwelling places where He abides. For never, however the soul may be, is anything else fitting for it…Humility, like the bee making honey, is always at work. Without it, everything goes wrong.” (IC.1.8)
The movement away from a worldview centered on them in the spotlight and God offstage as an emergency support was aptly called “the road to Jerusalem.”
When we truly encounter the Word of God in the Bible, we will have the same challenging experience. This is always the case when we address a self-knowledge rooted in selfishness. This is our universal inheritance from our original parents.
A steady dosage of God’s Word will produce a frontal attack on all superficiality and bogus values that prop up a false self. This fundamental internal distortion energizes an unyielding pursuit for comfort and control. The Word of God is indeed the two-edged sword. It opens up that part of our life that we would rather keep hidden. Everything about the Bible is geared to transform our self-knowledge. It helps us abandon selfishness and to build up a life of self-giving love and healing presence. This is a journey to the true self that places God at the center.
If the Bible is only a source of comfort for us, we are losing the real treasure. The true Word of God, revealed in Jesus, is about our personal transformation through our death to selfishness and our rebirth to love and service. Growing in true knowledge of ourselves is an essential element of this new life.
It is our commitment to walk in the footsteps of Jesus.
II
When we enter a serious encounter with God’s Word in the Bible, we always bring extensive personal baggage. There are countless pitfalls in the sacred task of prayerful reading of the Bible. These three essential steps will be most helpful.
…..Listen to what God has to say to me;
…..Seek to learn God’s will;
…..Always be committed to walk with Jesus.
Exposing the hidden agenda of the disciples was a constant part of Jesus’ teaching. It is also part of our search for true discipleship. We are all caught in a cultural and economic captivity that pulls us constantly away from gospel values.
A prayerful reading of the Word of God clearly surfaces our internal conflict and turmoil. Deep personal change is set before us as a non-negotiable summons. This gospel call to conversion centers on self-knowledge. It is a process of seeing ourselves in a new way, the way that the light of Christ opens before us.
True faithfulness will slowly but steadily unveil a deeply entrenched selfishness and deceit. With gentle divine guidance, we will see things in a new way. We will be uprooted and set loose. The choices before us will slowly erupt with an enticing clarity. This will be the first step on a long journey.
It will eventually become evident that God’s plans never seem to be finished. Along the way, our self-knowledge will be slowly transformed as we embrace a new freedom.
Teresa of Avila never tired of talking about the importance of self-knowledge. She knew well that growing in honest self-knowledge transported us into a humble and totally life-giving presence to God. The key is humility, the ability to accept ourselves as creatures utterly dependent on an all-powerful, all-loving and all-merciful Creator God. This is the true passage from the dominance of the ego, and its destructive false self, to the true self.
“Oh, but if it is in the room of self-knowledge! How necessary this room is – see that you understand me – even for those who the Lord has brought to the very dwelling places where He abides. For never, however the soul may be, is anything else fitting for it…Humility, like the bee making honey, is always at work. Without it, everything goes wrong.” (IC.1.8)
