A few days ago I discovered MusiCAD was rendering its wave files out of tune. It was in tune with itself so I didn't notice it until I tried to match the files up with waves made by an external program, only to discover MusiCAD was off by more than a half step. After an incredibly strange and mind-boggling bug hunt I did finally find the problem and MusiCAD is now in tune with the rest of the world. Interestingly, this bug parallels recent occurrences in my life and faith. In a lot of ways I've spent my life feeling like I was out of tune with the world, and more importantly, God. I was never able to put my finger on the reasons why until about a month ago when I put a lot of thought into programming interfaces. What came out of those thoughts is very interesting to me and may be useful to others so I'll put it into words as best as I can...
If you think of yourself as a body, a mind and a spirit, then those elements can also be thought of as three separate interfaces with God. We aren't always forced to use those interfaces with God but we are strongly encouraged to because God knows it's good for us and He loves it when we do, and as anybody that has used all three interfaces with God at the same time can tell you, the experience is amazing!
Interestingly, though, we only interface with each other through our bodies. A direct connection from one person's mind or spirit to another person's mind or spirit may be possible, but it is very rare and is often terrifying because we can't trust each other to connect on those levels and we really wouldn't want other people reading our minds anyway since there's a lot going on in there that we don't want others to use against us. Only with God can we safely use all three interfaces.
Fortunately, much of what goes on in the mind and spirit is visible on the body so we're not completely disconnected on those two levels. Seeing the effects of the mind and spirit manifested in the body is what computer programmers would call "read only" as in you can see what's going on in someone's mind by what is shown on their body but you can't directly enter that person's mind to read it fully or make changes to it. To make changes to someone's mind you must use your body to communicate to the other person and the other person must allow their mind to be changed by that communication. It's an inefficient way of doing things but it's much safer than just allowing everybody direct access (just imagine the horror of someone being able to maliciously "hack" into your brain).
What's really awesome about the three interfaces is that in the perfect world made available to us by the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus, we will be able to interface with each other using all three interfaces. Not only that, but the interfaces will be wide open and nothing will need to be held back. Can you imagine that! No wonder Moses was glowing when he came down from the mountain.
By defining things this way I've come to many realizations regarding why I felt dissonance in my life and now that things are a bit clearer for me and my interactions with the world are more defined, I'm finally able to start taking the steps necessary to get into tune.
2 comments:
Hey Andrew...
Thanks for sending me the link to this blog - didn't know it was here.
Wow - you are right on theologically in what you wrote on "In tune" and the implications of being able to interface body-mind-spirit are incredible. I think that people who know each other very well (your mom and me) learn to operate on more than just a body-body level of communication but that's another subject altogether.
More thoughts on communication. Even as persons, there is a difference between sending an email, writing a letter, talking on the phone, and meeting in person. I think that the more important the communication, the more we should strive toward a person-to-person communication. If it's really important, don't just send an email.
Another thought - so what is prayer? Is it just a matter of me talking to the back of the inside of my head? (mind?). Is there some way that my spirit can commune with the Spirit of God? Is body posture important? I remember C S talking in Screwtape about how "the victim" should not be allowed to kneel when he prayed because to humble the body is to humble the spirit... Connection??? Maybe some of the ancient/classic worship traditions have more to them than meets the eye.
More later... Keep thinking...
><> Dr. Dad
Yeah, I was thinking more along the lines of strangers communicating when I wrote that, but definitely the better you know someone the more likely it is there will be mind to mind and soul to soul interfaces available to certain extents.
Another thing we need to beware of is the fact that demons can also use all three interfaces as well, whether you believe they can or not.
Also, one of the things I was getting at with the whole "the body indicates what the mind is thinking" statements is that there IS no better form of communication than face to face. Not email, letters, talking on the phone or web-cams. Nothing compares to face to face communication and all the other human invented forms of communication are really just there to bridge space and time, which as Jesus showed us, will not even be an issue in the new heaven and new earth.
It makes me wonder if there's a reason we were limited to walking speed and yelling distance after the fall, and if so, then maybe it's not such a good thing to be able to communicate across vast distances and travel faster than we can walk. Or maybe the pursuit of such technology is a good thing because it gets us closer to what Jesus could do after Easter without it.
More likely, anything gained by technology is more than offset by the losses it creates in other areas, which would make sense in a world that seems to continually spiral downward and out of control.
So now for the "what if"...
What if technology became so advanced that a network of orbiting satellites was able to connect everybody on the planet mind to mind, and everything everybody knows was instantaneously known by all (Just like the Borg on Star-Trek)?
Since Christians would also be connected to the "mind network", then everybody on the planet would be forced to face the choice of following Jesus or rejecting him because everybody would know what every Christian knows and they would no longer be able to "hide" behind the illusions making it impossible for them to make an informed choice about the question.
So the sequence of events would go...
1) All minds are connected (by satellites in this example).
2) Each individual mind has it's illusions regarding Jesus stripped away.
3) Each individual mind makes a choice about whether it can deal with Jesus' claims.
-- keep in mind that steps #2 and #3 would happen immediately after step #1, (within seconds of the "satellites" going active) --
4) After every mind has made its individual choice Jesus returns to make final judgement because being connected to every mind on the planet for any length of time after that would be absolutely hellacious and he wouldn't let it go on.
It may be that the world is steadily moving towards this technological possibility and the devil is tempting the powers at be into forcing us to be connected to that technology because he knows that it would bring judgement day and the eternal death of the thousands that would make the "no" choice in regards to Jesus.
It may not happen exactly that way, but that particular "what if" would explain a lot of what Jesus said about eschatology. I'm thinking particularly about the word being spread to the ends of the earth because we're not going to get more "spread to the ends" than a hive mind will be. That's ultimate spread.
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