Two Worlds

My kingdom is not of this world....(Jn.18:36)

 

Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit (Jn. 3:6).

 

Toward the end of his life, the brilliant doctor of the church Thomas Aquinas, who had written volumes of theology, exclaimed, "It is all straw!" of his writings.  And Jesus told Nicodemus, "I have spoken to you of earthly things, and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?"

 

We live in two worlds: the earthly world, which is wonderful and magnificent in itself; and the heavenly world, the world which we enter only through the door of Jesus Christ and prayer. And those who journey in the unseen world find it very difficult to describe what they see there.  In fact, I would say that it is virtually impossible to tell of our experience, except to those who have already been in that world themselves.

 

Recently, I re-watched Star Wars, and again, I was struck by the parallels between true Christianity and this movie.  Luke Skywalker lived in a desolate world controlled by power and dominion; the only 'life' to be lived in that world was a life controlled by the evil empire.  Any deviation from the values of the empire was soon crushed.  But the rebel alliance, a weak and insignificant group of people, knew their strength came from another world -- the ancient world of Obi Ben Kenobi and of Yoda -- the world of "the Force."

 

Luke's journey into that world meant he had to let go of his own powers of sight, hearing, and intellect -- the powers of this world -- and enter into a "cloud of unknowing," in the words of the spiritual masters, a world where he could depend neither on his senses nor on modern technology for assistance.  Luke had to trust "the Force" to lead him, and he had to do it by submitting his own life to the power of the Force.  And though he could have told others of his journey and the stages that led him to his final submission of his life and personal powers, his descriptions would have been only a 'story,' or a 'fairy tale' to those who themselves had not made the same journey into the unseen world. 

 

I have been to China, and though I can describe what I saw there, I cannot really pass on my experience of China to anyone who has not been there themselves.  Before I went to Rome, I had seen pictures of St. Peter's and the Vatican, but they were indeed "another world," a world I had not visited for myself.  And the pictures were 'as straw' to me in the world I lived in before I went there for myself.  Now, though, when I see images of St. Peter's and the Vatican, those images trigger memories of my own experiences in those places.

 

Paul says, "We do...speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we speak of God's wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden ....none of the rulers of this age understood it...as it is written:

 

no eye has seen,

no ear has heard,

no mind has conceived

what God has prepared for those who love him" (Is. 64:4).

 

But then Paul goes on to add this: "but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit" (I Cor.2:6-10).

 

The one who has never visited China or Rome will never resonate with my experience there; to that person, I am just describing "a foreign country."  So too, the words of the spirit will never resonate with the one who has not entered the world of prayer:  the man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned...but we have the mind of Christ (I Cor. 2:14).

 

Like Luke Skywalker, there is only one way into the world of Spirit -- we must lay down our own lives, the life of this world, and enter in through the door of Jesus Christ, in submission to Him of all our natural powers and strengths.  Then and only then can He begin to teach us the things of his kingdom, the kingdom "not of this world." 

 

There are Ben Kenobi's and Yoda's still left in this world to point the way to the unseen world, but we must enter that world for ourselves; they can take us up to the door but not through it, much as Moses, the Law-giver, could lead his people up to the Promised land, but only Jeshua/ Joshua / Jesus could take them into it.