Competing Systems

The economic system is designed to maximize profit at the expense of others. This is the core motivation of capitalism. Thus it is completely based on the selfishness of the human heart desiring to take from others in order to supply our own needs, desires and even extravagance. In this way it can start to be seen how subtle the trap is of believing in and embracing the principles of economics from the world's viewpoint. It prevents us from living life in the freedom of the true children of God.

The system of law from the world's viewpoint acts to reinforce the selfish roots of economics as well as to serve as manipulation for maintaining the third system which is hierarchy. Human laws are meant as means to control other's behavior and even privileges largely for our own benefit. We put away people who malfunction so we can be free of their interference in our lives with little or no thought of seeking their restoration. We economically fine people for breaking our laws to further enrich ourselves or reinforce our institutions designed to elevate and favor the elite while suppressing the rest.

But this is not limited to capitalism. Communism, socialism and every other ism are all firmly rooted in reinforcing the desires of the selfish heart and to segregate society into fractured levels of separation and artificial distinctions.

Our justice systems are also firmly rooted in false definitions of the very word justice. Because of this, the way we administrator so-called justice almost always involves some sort of punitive measures to inflict pain, suffering and/or deprivation against those who don't cooperate. It is all based on the false notion of balance, rooted firmly in the reward/punishment philosophy inherited from the original Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

As an example, repentance as perceived in the legal mindset of a person immersed in views of God that define Him as relating to us primarily in a legal mindset compels them to seek for pardon so that they can function freely in the hierarchy of the church or society without restrictions or even moral accountability. “What must I do to be pardoned?” is their primary question.

Repentance from a true conviction of the heart, motivated by an awareness that our sins have caused others great suffering and pain compels a person to seek healing for their own damaged perceptions and motives and to desire reconciliation so that their relationships can be restored. The focus in this mindset is a desire for wholeness so they can become channels of life instead of exploiters. “What must I do to be saved? To be salvaged? To receive salve for my destructive attitudes and disposition and selfish orientation?”

Hierarchy is the third fundamental leg of civilization that gives stability and definition to the other two legs and is deeply intertwined with them. Hierarchy has to do with pride, ego, independence and exploitation of others for our own pleasure or status. Hierarchy is pride in practice and infects people at every strata of society. It creates the social layering that determines each person's role and position in life and their relative value to everyone else artificially determined and recalculated frequently depending on their performance or resources to give us pleasure. Self-disdain and hatred are just as much a fruit of pride as is arrogance and aloofness. In every respect that we view ourselves and others on any kind of relative value scale we are playing the game of pride and living in reference to the artificial determinations of hierarchy.

God's kingdom or government is foreign to all three of these foundational concepts that make up what we call civilization. God's system is so different from these that we find it even difficult to imagine, much less how to participate in it. Jesus taught very bluntly the principles of God's ways of living, but religion has largely obscured and distorted His teachings and substituted them with beliefs that are more palatable to the selfish human heart. That is why it takes radical death and rebirth of the heart and thinking for us to even begin to learn how to relate to others outside of these diabolical counterfeit principles that have displaced the the natural principles governing God's true family system. That is why only a spiritual person can discern spiritual things, for the ways of the world deny and distort spiritual concepts through the blinding effects inflicted by the virus of selfishness.

Only by catching a glimpse of the beauty of God's system that is based purely on agape love can we be drawn to desire what our hearts were designed to enjoy. Only as we are awakened to the fact that our hearts and lives are largely functioning backwards to their intended design can we be attracted to choose to let God's Spirit reverse the direction of our attention and mental flow. Then our hearts can begin to thrive and come alive as we increasingly taste the healing remedy from the Tree of Life.

As we integrate more into God's way of living and thinking, we discover increasingly how skewed and false many of our perceptions are about everything. We find that nearly all the words we have used to describe what we thought described religion have been subtly swapped out for alternative definitions so widely accepted that the true definitions are viewed with suspicion. We discover that what feels normal is actually sick, because normal has been a measurement of average, not of original intent and design. Thus because we live in a world where everyone is terminally sick and in desperate condition spiritually as well as in many other ways, taking an average and then assuming that is what is healthy is a very faulty technique to try to define what should be considered healthy.

One reason Jesus came to this earth to live as a human was to show us for the first time what real normal looks like. Jesus came to demonstrate what our original designe was meant to be and how living within the natural parameters of how humans were originally designed to function will result in being reconnected back into the circuit of life in God's universe. Because all we have known are systems that produce pain and death, we are largely ignorant of the ways of life except as the Spirit of Life awakens deep inside us attractions toward God.

The paradigms that we use as templates through which to perceive God and reality and the principles that govern life determines how we respond to every situation and how we interpret the words that we hear God speaking to us. If we embrace the popular legal approach that has defiled religion and obscured the truth as displayed in Jesus, then we will live in some level of fear about God and will be unable to fully trust Him. But complete trust and love is vital to being able to live in His presence.

The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. (1 John 4:8, 18)

Wemust move past the immature mentality of a rule-based religion that relies on fear to induce compliance into a reflective, agape love-based religion that elicits spontaneous trust. True saving faith is a natural response to ever-increasing revelations of God's awesome attractiveness that causes us to be salvaged and restored to live in alignment with how God intended us to thrive. Perfect love casts out fear.

Choosing to remain in the lowlands of legal views of God blocks us from having our hearts transformed through the power of that agape love which can only be found beyond the narrow confines of legalism and fear. God has not given us the spirit of fear, so if we insist on maintaining fear-based beliefs about God we will continue to worship an inferior, man-made image of God and fail to enter into the real joy of true salvation. False, fear-based beliefs are what foster the proliferation of false feelings and confusion about both God and the instructions He has given to enlighten us about how He wants to relate to us. Religion has created some of the greatest obstacles to true, life-giving spirituality and often prevents us from restoration to our true design.

It is helpful to some extent to see how the false and counterfeit systems have distorted God's original design. But spending too much time unmasking all the counterfeits can itself become a deadly diversion if one fails to spend even more time and effort becoming acquainted with the real, the genuine, the agape system that only can revive the heart and bring true satisfaction. Counterfeit systems subtly exchange real satisfaction with pleasure which deceives the heart through temporary satisfaction but soon leaves it feeling more empty than before. This is one of the symptoms of all the counterfeit systems of Satan.

We are led to believe that something really works because we can get immediate results by using Satan's methods rather than God's. Since religion often has taught us that these methods are what God uses, the confusion becomes even deeper. But it matters not what label we may slap on a method or concept, if it is not derived from a proper understanding of God's life-giving circuit of unselfish, agape, other-focused way of living it will always result sooner or later in disappointment and emptiness. Whether good or evil, if the DNA of the seeds we use came from the wrong Tree then the fruit will always produce after its kind, for that is an unavoidable principle of reality. Only by changing our spiritual diet (and many times our physical one as well) to eat only of the fruit related to the Tree of Life can we begin to experience real life, real growth, real healing and lasting satisfaction.

How can we determine the difference between the fruit or the plants produced by the seeds of the fruit? God says we must learn to test the spirits. We cannot physically devise a scientific test to determine what comes from which Tree in the Garden of Eden. Rather we must receive the gift of the Holy Spirit whose fruit is identical to the DNA of the Tree of Life. As we learn to abide in the Spirit of Jesus and allow Him to instruct our hearts with the parameters of God's ways in contrast to how we are used to thinking and living, we will increasingly be empowered to discern between the many spirits. We must compare their DNA as well as their effects to see if they are reflective of God's true character and His kind of methods or whether they are more in harmony with the spirit of the great counterfeiter, the accuser which at its core is always selfishness.