Quote:
|
I won't cite the author or the title of the book because people will make the discussion about the author and not the content...
|
We were not created to live as though life depended on what we do to achieve our own worth. Nor were we created to live the bifurcation (dividing into 2 parts) of our inner and outer selves... It is foreign to our created natures to live in falsehood, and when we do, we are like fish out of water. The extent to which we live as hypocrites - literally as actors - is the extent to which we are sick in our inner being. Pretense is a fatal disease.
... Almost all emotional and psychological illnesses are in one way or another connected to an unwillingness or inability to face truth. When we try to create truth based on our own wishes simply acknowledging truth, we are on the way to destroying ourselves. When we hide what is real in order to project a false appearance, we are literaly making ourselves sick.
Life in the flesh... however is fundamentally opposed to the truth. It arises from and is sustained by a supression of the truth. The more truth is covered up and hidden, the more power and evil have to do their work in our lives.
... Satan is a "real spirit of unreality". His power is solely a power of a lie - making people believe that what is real is unreal and what is unreal is real. He [Satan] needs the darkness of secrecy, the dimness of deception, to be empowered. The light of truth, exposes and destroys him. All that is evil therefore must feed off the unreality and deception that life in the flesh creates.
... When we understand the evil and destructiveness of pretense, we can perhaps better understand why the main oppostition to the work of Christ... came from the religious leaders of his day.
...This also explains why some of the opposition to the radical work of Christ in the world today comes from within the church, not outside it.
Threaded Mode
