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People float on emotions in a similar way. The emotions within can’t be seen by us but they lift us upward with joy and push us downward with anxiety and depression. Any pilot would say understanding how the air can push a plane up or an air pocket can dramatically drop a plane down is critical. Understanding how to manage emotions is more important because our emotions are closer to us than the air around an airplane. Just like the air, oftentimes, emotions are unseen and unnoticed. But sometimes they are blatantly obvious. I fly fairly frequently and every once in a while we have to fly through turbulence and storms. It does not bother me all that much because I work under the assumption that the pilots know what they are doing. I feel that they have been very well trained for any type of weather or situation that the heavens hold. Once when flying from Chicago to the West Coast our plane lost one of its four engines. The pilot with incredible calm informed us that the plane could fly perfectly well with losing even another engine, and then he safely flew us back to Chicago for another plane. We also have to learn to manage our lives with all the changes that our internal weather brings us. That inner weather could be just as dangerous as anything the skies can hold. States of anxiety, depression, worthlessness, guilt, shame come with all the force of hurricanes at times. Pilots make a point of avoiding flying through hurricanes, but unfortunately we can’t fly around our inner storms. When those storms hit, we need to be as skilled as pilots. Why do pilots fly? It’s a great way of getting places. Flying is fast, sometimes breathtaking, and they can get to wonderful places far away. Managing our emotions can do the same things for us: we can experience all that life offers in a healthy way, and we can make life goals, savor relationships, and become the people that we and God want us to be. Managing emotions is important and gets us to healthy places. Before manned flight became a reality, some of the brightest people on the planet felt and thought that flying would not work. They asked, how can you fly on something you can’t see (at least they could see water and the oceans), and that is literally as light as air? Planes with engines and a million flights later changed their minds. In some ways with regard to emotions our culture and even our church culture is like the days before flight. Emotions are ignored, downplayed, and mismanaged. When we go to certain churches, the best and sometimes only advice we receive is to ignore them and not to trust them. That’s like telling a pilot to ignore hurricanes, and lightning storms. It’s not wise advice. Managed well we can soar on healthy emotions and we can effectively work with the painful ones.
That is what this book is about: how to manage emotions and live
off of the healthy ones. Pilots receive training and are
given maps and pictures to guide their flights. What you will
find in this book will not only be a description of how emotions
work, but skills for their management, and of special importance
critically significant word pictures that have been used to
positively change the emotional lives of thousands. You will
discover also a significant truth about biblical pictures that when
applied to our emotions, these pictures will bring the peace and joy
that God promised. I have a joke that I tell that very few laugh at, but I think is hilarious. In fact, I consider it one of the funniest jokes I have ever thought up. It’s this. The only thing that Evangelicals use the imagination for is not to have dirty thoughts. It’s yet to bring down the house anywhere. But I think it is funny, but I also think that for many evangelicals it cuts too close to home for them to laugh. Unfortunately an awful lot of Christians spend their lives specializing in what they do not do instead of specializing in what we should do. One of the things we should do that will deeply change our lives is to use God’s great gift of imagination positively and powerfully. If you have been reading this book closely, you may have noticed something that is quite significant. Evangelicals, those who take the Bible and Jesus with great seriousness, have trouble understanding the role and function of the emotions. But that is not the only area of struggle. Two more exist, one is with our imagination and the other is with our sexuality. Part of the strategy of Satan to nullify the power of the church is to make its members uncomfortable applying the victory of Christ to their lives. Satan’s goal is to make us uncomfortable with our own insides so that we do not use the blessing of our emotions, imagination, and sexuality the way God intended. Yet the Bible very powerfully and clearly describes how these gifts should be used. Noticing this chart, you will see that what we have in our imagination deeply influences our perspectives, together they define our relationships, and as a result our emotions and desires react.
Imagination God has never intended that our emotions, imagination, and sexuality should be areas of ignorance or nervousness. Instead the Bible has a clear pattern on how these relate. The imagination is at the top of how we function in life. We will argue in this chapter and the next that the imagination or the pictures that we paint on our hearts are critical to how we look at life. Those pictures will control our perspective or how we look at life and others, and our imagination and perspective will determine the health of our relationships. From the influence of those three realities, imagination, perspective, and relationships, our emotions will result. Our emotions will be the fruit of what is above them. Then, as we have seen in previous chapters, our desires and appetites will either be enflamed or managed based upon what we do with our emotional states. Beginning the process of managing our emotions starts with the imagination and how that is used. The pictures that inhabit our imagination will have an immense and controlling effect on the emotions. Any eight grade girl can illustrate how this works, and any parent of an eight grader has seen it. Some boy with pimples glances in the girl’s direction once, and the imagination takes over. What is in her imagination is a picture of this boy trembling with romance at the very thought of her. Her heart and imagination are fixated on the young man. When he glanced with empty eyes, he was actually reenacting a computer game within his head where he was crushing the life out of Krull the Cruel. He gazed at her for long seconds because his own imagination had him on a different planet fighting for his life. She took that glance and made a romance! Now when she walks by him in the hall, her heart soars with excitement and she longs to clutch his hand. Her desires, emotions, relationships, and perspective are enslaved to what is in her imagination. Imagination, nevertheless, is not a toy for children, it is a critical part of the spiritual life. Imagination in the Old Testament Two Old Testament portions tell us something about the imagination and its management. The first is God’s condemnation of humanity by the Flood. This act showed that God did not want the imagination to be used in a wrong way. To the quivering people of Judah, much later, God through Isaiah gave another example of how the imagination can be used in a very forceful and positive way to bless their lives. In Genesis 6, God was going to judge the world through a great flood. As God looked out upon that early earth He saw a profound misuse of the imagination. And the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually (Genesis 6:5). The LORD saw the condition of humanity’s imagination and that it was only evil. The word for imagination in Hebrew is striking. It is Yetser and the word is derived from the Hebrew word for a potter, Yatsor. As a potter forms a pot on a wheel so a person forms an imagination in the mind. We do not form pictures and stories in our mind with our hands on a whirling wheel, but the analogy created in the Hebrew language is potent. The potter has to keep his eyes glued to the pot forming before him, and similarly our minds are more than glued on what is in our imagination. Our minds become absorbed by what is in the imagination. This of course is not a wondrous beginning for humanity’s use of this great gift of God, the imagination. But as degeneracy and violence flooded the earth, every aspect of being human became polluted. The text said that the use of the imagination was evil and not the imagination itself. What some evangelicals forget is that, for example, the human hand can be used to break a window to burglarize a home or the hand can be used to comfort and rub away the fears of a child’s heart. As with the hand, so with the heart and the imagination, all become good or bad in their using. Some very conservative people define life narrowly, and seem to forget that it is not Satan that has created the world and us. God did. And when He did so He pronounced everything He had made as exceedingly good (Genesis 1:31). Satan did not say within himself, “Now that Adam and Eve fell, I will create an imagination within them, so that they can become really rotten.” Contrary to that, evil is the misuse of that which was originally created by God for good. Evil cannot create a gnat or rearrange an atom, but like a parasite it takes over that which was originally good. So the issue for the Christian is how to use all that is within us for good. How can the imagination be used well? In Isaiah, we have the positive use of the imagination. Isaiah lived in the sixth century BC when the Assyrian Empire was the dominant force in the ancient world. The Assyrians were vicious. To terrify the nations they piled human heads outside of the gates of the cities they captured and massacred. Judah and the small nations lived in the terror of the Assyrian army. One can well imagine the thoughts in the minds of the mothers of Jerusalem as they held their babies in their arms and considered the approach of these enemies from the north. Their imaginations must have been enflamed with pictures of the standard practice of the Assyrians: they smashed babies’ heads into the walls of their parent’s homes. Isaiah though had a message for the scared Judeans about what they should do with their imagination. The verse that I will quote is very familiar. Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee; because he trusteth in thee (Isaiah 26:3). The translators took the Hebrew word Yetser or imagination and translated it by mind. In reality a more literal translation would be: “The person who has a controlled imagination you will keep in complete peace because he trusts in you.” The person whose imagination is controlled through faith will have a deep and tranquil spirit within. For within the person’s imagination, he or she has a picture of a God that can be completely trusted to take care of them. For the verses in the passage repeatedly underscore the trust that the person should use to manage the imagination.
2 Open the gates, that the righteous nation which keeps faith The picture the person has of God is the “everlasting rock” who never is shaken and protects and secures His own. In verse five the lofty city, Nineveh, is reduced to rubble, but the faithful person will abide. Within their imagination and their hearts God is viewed as the everlasting rock. With such a picture and the exercise of faith, the individual experienced tranquility. The emotions in the midst of the upheavals of the ancient world were at peace. Imagination Revolutionized The Old Testament is filled with endless pictures that can challenge the heart and the imagination to trust God. But it was the coming of Christ that created a true spiritual revolution in the use of the imagination. With the coming of Christ, He has given us pictures from God to place within our imagination. Even though many conservative believers are aware of these pictures,
their own fearful prejudices keep them from seeing how forcefully
Christ addressed the imagination. Sadly more than a few
conservative Bible believers are nervous about using their
imaginations. One huge reason for that is how the very word
imagination is used in our culture. “To imagine” or
“imagination” carries with it in English the creating of something
that does not exist and will never exist. To imagine is not to
deal with what is real. But when we look at the Old and New
Testament we will see that what we do with our imaginations is to
picture life the way God really sees it. The
imagination for the Christian should be our way of stepping into the
unlimited resources and love of our Father. We can recreate
the God’s picture of life within ourselves. God’s intended use
of the imagination is to use it to see the world the way He does! So it is with Christ that the imagination comes into its own. The great example of Christ’s message for our imaginations is the Sermon on the Mount. That sermon is a turbo-charger for the human imagination. The sermon is one hundred and eleven verses long. We can divide the sermon into
His goal was to reduce the mind to confusion, the emotions to pain, and elevate the imagination to Heaven! At the latter part of the sermon, He will use the imagination to transform the heart. To examine how He did that, is like viewing the work of Michaelangelo, or listening to the music of a Bach, or watching the figure skating of Dorothy Hamil. We will perceive the workings of a true genius of communication. In psychology there is the left and right brain. If I can remember the difference, the right side of the brain is the creative and artistic, and the left is the logical and reasonable. The Sermon on the Mount is repentance and righteousness for the right brain. The Sermon is a masterpiece of verbal expression, but the strongest part of its message is what is directed to the imagination. To appreciate the force of the Sermon, we have to imagine ourselves in the ancient world. This is almost impossible for us because our realm has been invaded by the world’s most forceful personality, Jesus Christ. We can’t picture the ages without Him. But let’s try. Let’s put ourselves back in the second year of Christ’s ministry in Galilee. Judah, Galilee, and the regions about were under the stress of the Roman Empire. Puppet governors held sway under Roman despotism. Taxes fluctuated from 18% to 30% depending on how greedy and how needy Rome felt. The High Priesthood in Jerusalem was held by those who were from a completely different family than Aaron’s; that family was thoroughly corrupt. The most admired people in the nation were the Pharisees because they were religious enough not to knuckle under, but more than religious enough to put endless rules on serving and worshiping God. What they demanded as standard religious practice was so time consuming and detailed that only the very well off could practice Judaism. Christ described the people as being overwhelmed with religious obligation and worn-out by religious practice (Matthew 11:29-30). To further paint the picture of where the people were at, He said that as they stumbled along with both arms filled with their religious burdens, they were set upon by religious and political wolves who threw them down and were chewing on them (Matthew 9:36). The people were so far gone that some of their best and brightest men fled the nation to build male only communities down at the Dead Sea so they would not be tainted by the politics, the priesthood and worst of all the pollutions of women. John’s Baptism said it all. In the Old Testament law a religiously unclean person could go to a stream and dunk and wash himself or herself to become religiously clean. John the Baptist said, however, that the people and leaders were a brood of snakes, and they needed to repent and be immersed or cleansed in the Jordan like Naaman, the pagan Syrian leper. But unlike Naaman the people were so unclean they could not self-immerse, but John and his disciples had to do that for them. As religiously polluted, politically oppressed, and spiritually bankrupt as the people were, how could Jesus cut through the confusion, pain, and mistaken teaching? He did it majestically through the Sermon on the Mount. Rhetoric is the science of speech-making and communication. Christ used His speeches to create crisis, hence the Rhetoric of Crisis. He put them into pain so that He could deliver them through their imagination. Starting with a confusing Poem, transitioning with two pictures, He accosted them with the Rhetoric of Crisis to prepare them for an unimaginably different world. The Poem of Blessing Beginning with a Poem, He turned their religious world upside down. The culture assumed that blessings meant prosperity. Godliness in their thinking was gain. The oppression they were under was so impossibly difficult that they could not conceive that they were under the blessing of God. His Poem turned the world upside down. Sorrow He said was a blessing and oppression was a spiritual opportunity. Blessed are the ones who have no more energy, have given up on their own efforts, who are poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the ones who are continually mourning, for they shall be comforted (Matthew 5:3-4). The Old Testament was filled with Psalms of Blessing and proverbs describing how to obtain spiritual privileges. Assuming that blessedness was benefit, the Old Testament writers encouraged rich expectations among the people of significant joy stemming from sincere godliness. But Christ’s poem is perversely contrary, and concretely confusing: like being hit with a piece of concrete in the middle of one’s religious assumptions. He said that if you were poor in spirit or lacking religious energy or fanaticism the kingdom was yours. Those who were rich in spirit or full of spirit normally were religiously driven. Even worse if you were continually mourning, you would be comforted, by implication, by God. In other words, the worse off you were, the spiritually better off you were. Blessed are they that have been persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they shall reproach you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Be happy, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets that were before you (Matthew 5:10-12). At the end of the poem, He commended those who were having a miserable life. The greater your misery the happier you should be. The badge of your spiritual character became in this Poem the bruises on your back and the blackness of your reputation. Imagine if you really had not heard this a hundred times before. Imagine if you did not know what to expect out of Jesus’ mouth how confused you would be. Poverty, mourning, criticism, and persecution created an inverse ratio: the worse off you were the more blessed your life. What was He trying to do? He was turning their world upside down. His Poem told them that this worst of worlds was for them the best of worlds. Not infrequently pastors will talk to husbands or wives who are dissatisfied with their marriages and wish they had a different partner. Sometimes it is true that the person they have married has tragic flaws or huge difficulties, but most often it is not. To those who are dissatisfied and wanting out, a message should be given that challenges where they are and their emotions. Blessed are you with your marital pain, finally now you are open to change! Blessed are you with your desire for something different, for it is time for changing yourself so your spouse has the joy of someone else! The last thing the dissatisfied wife or husband wants to hear is that where they are is where God wants them to be. And the next to last thing they want to hear is that the person they are married to will be a source of deep and lasting joy later. All that message will bring is immediate confusion. That is the kind of message Christ is delivering to the Galileans and Judeans. This mess that you are in, is a place of immense spiritual opportunity, blessed are you! Rhetoric of Crisis Now that his listeners’ minds were confused and perplexed, next He turned their emotions inside out with the Rhetoric of Crisis. Characteristically through out His ministry Jesus would turn religious superficiality and presumptuous rule keeping into emotional pain. Alchemists supposedly could turn lead into gold; Jesus the spiritual alchemist would turn religious people into real people of real pain, and the pain was true spiritual gold. He used what I have called the Rhetoric of Crisis. A simple example was the rich young ruler who felt religiously he had done all well, and just needed one or two more tips to inherit eternal life. Jesus tipped his world upside down by telling him he had to sell everything he had and follow Him. The crisis hit and the young rich man was deeply pained (Luke 18:18-23). Pain was the best possible place for him. Christ’s Rhetoric of Crisis crashed the complacent young man into a wall of pain. The Sermon on the Mount has one hundred and eleven verses. The Poem has ten verses followed by two snapshots of the disciples as salt and light. Immediately following Christ has the language of crisis for the next forty verses or close to forty percent of the Sermon. He turned their religious world upside down and dumped them into a bucket of discomfort. What He did was take their collapsing and ineffective religious system, and push it over a cliff. The audience He was speaking to was already burdened and loaded down with guilt and a sense of spiritual failure. Feeling deeply unclean, the people flocked to John’s baptism and repented at John’s message. Wallowing in muddy guilt, they wanted it washed away! Jesus instead of washing it away plunged them into a volcano of condemnation. They lived in a deeply legalistic and rule bound culture where rules were everywhere. Instead of relieving their pain, Jesus increased it. Telling His disciples that they were the salt of the earth and the light of the world, He shared His expectations. "Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, . . . shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:19).” None of the expectations of the Law will be lowered or ignored. For many who listened that was not a great surprise, but Jesus’ next breath delivered a shock. For I say to you, that unless your righteousness goes far beyond that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:20). The scribes and Pharisees had a patented path to God’s kingdom. They were completely confident about their approach. They felt God was in Heaven with a special smile just for them. They were the envy of the ordinary Judean and Galilean because they had the rules, the time, and the determination to live the life they told everyone God wanted. No one could do better than the Pharisees. At least that’s what they said. Immediately the crowd’s stomach became knotted. If the Pharisees weren’t cutting it, not a chance existed that the any one else would. That started the descent into painful guilt that Jesus wanted. From the statement about the Pharisees, Jesus proceeded to bludgeon everyone’s religious sense of security and well being. Jesus Rhetoric of Crisis continued. Christ took eleven common topics that the Pharisees taught and the people attempted to practice. The topics reflected what was the universal beliefs about what a righteous person should do. Christ was going to take the wrecking ball of His righteousness and demolish the flimsy house of religious prejudices and self-serving practices. These topics are: 1. Anger and hate, 2. Contentions with a brother, 3. Lust, 4. Stumbling, 5. Divorce and marriage, 6. Oaths, 7. Revenge, 8. Dealing with enemies, 9. Alms and fasting, 10. Prayer, 11. Judgementalism To see what He did to the poor people who were listening to Him, let’s take a few examples. The common belief was, as it is today, that murder was an act that put somebody beyond God’s mercy, and was absolutely condemned. All murderers go to Hell. Christ took that belief and showed that deeper issues were behind that and needed to be addressed. "You have heard that the ancients were told, 'You shall not commit murder' and 'Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.' "But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever shall say to his brother, 'Raca,' shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever shall say, 'You fool,' shall be guilty enough for the fiery hell (Matthew 5:21-22). Murder according to Christ was only a symptom for despising and hating a brother within ones heart. The outward act is the fruit of the inward condition, and that condition was enough to send a person to Hell! Immediately through the listeners must have punched the thought, “If that’s true, then a lot of us here are destined for Hell fire.” Like a fog rolling in, guilt began to take over the hearers’ hearts. The crowd thought, “We have to be better than the Pharisees, and he’s saying we’re no better than murderers.” The Rhetoric of Crisis was having its effect! Another example of Christ taking an outward act and connecting it to an inward condition occurred a few verses later. Adultery in some of the villages was still punished by stoning, within the cities Roman forbade execution, The Old Testament Law demanded death for adultery. Christ directly went to the heart condition behind adultery, and made no distinction between the act and the lust driving immorality. "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall never commit adultery', but I say to you, that everyone who continually looks on a woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her already in his heart (Matthew 5:27-28). Guilt exploded through the hearts of the men listening. Their worlds of fantasy, for some entire universes of illicit lust, were called what they really were, adultery. Some may say that sexual fantasy may harm no one but it offends God, and corrupts the person, and immeasurably degrades women. The crowd further thought, “We have to be better than the Pharisees, and he is saying we’re on the same level as adulterers and murderers.” Again the Rhetoric of Crisis was having its effect! Instead of blood, their hearts were pumping industrial strength guilt. The Lord's Prayer Part of the Sermon on the Mount is the “Lord’s Prayer” and in the midst of the words of that petition was again another Crisis. 'And forgive us our obligations, as we also have forgiven those who are obligated to us. . . . "For if you forgive men for their unmet obligations, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. "But if you do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions (Matthew 5:12-15). The “Lord’s Prayer” has five issues: God as a Father, His will, our needs, forgiveness, and protection from the Devil. The only issue that Christ provided commentary on was the necessity of forgiveness. In the prayer, Christ made the Father’s forgiveness dependent on how we forgave others. Again the listener’s stomach was shot through with anxiety, they thought, “We have to be more righteous than the Pharisees, we’re in the same boat as murderers and adulterers, and our pathetic standard of forgiveness is what the God Heaven will apply to us. We’re doomed!” Remember when we first heard or read the Sermon on the Mount, and the anxious thoughts it created. Endless repetitions of its contents and the endless shortcomings of our lives blunted its knife edge. But for the audience in front of Christ, it struck like a newly sharpened sickle cutting through high grass. Everyone listening was succumbing to creeping despair. Insight occurs when all of us are startled out of prejudices we are barely aware of. Christ’s surgically sharp words cut open the hearts and showed the decay. The topics Christ addressed, anger and hate, contentions with a brother, lust, stumbling, divorce and marriage, oaths, revenge, dealing with enemies, alms and fasting, prayer, and judgmentalism, are all taken back to the condition of the heart that erupted with adultery, murder and all the other acts. As the thousands listen, they murmur to one another: “It’s impossible!” “We can’t ever become what He asks.” “We will have to become new persons.” “This is depressing.” “I can’t stand all the guilt I am feeling.” “I will have to become somebody else than who I am to do these things!” Jesus has them where He wanted them, despairing and guilty. Now they were ready for a series of answers. What the crowd’s failing really was, was not their guilt, or their shame, but their lack of imagination. They could not imagine that they could really become what Christ was asking. He has confused them with His Poem; He has stricken them with guilt, now He was going to deliver them through their imagination. Will, memory, nor reason could deliver them. The will cannot dismiss depression, bid guilt be gone, and tell despair to disappear. Will is driven by the emotions, but will cannot bid them change. It would be easier for the will to command Mount Everest to move as to tell anxiety and guilt to cease. Memory cannot help at all. All memory can do is record the history of failure, and record the attempts of the heart to avoid seeing the pervasive lust, hatred, and anger inhabiting the soul. Reason can only deduce what was true in the past will be true in the future. Reason can only plot the decline into degeneracy not stop it. Reason cannot order the approaching tides of the ocean to retreat; nor can reason order the heart to become white as snow. The Pictures for the Heart The only force able to place the listeners into a new world was the imagination. With sixteen illustrations Christ was going to take them into a new world, with a new picture of their hearts, with a new Father God. They do not need character, nor will, deep minds, memories of a history of righteousness. What they need is a willingness to see the reality that Jesus saw. The Sermon on the Mount was a confusing Poem about the value of spiritual desolation, an exposition on character failings concerning ten topics, and above all a brilliant invitation to participate in the imagination of the Christ, to see all as He saw it. In the first part of the Sermon, He told them He saw them as the salt and light of the world. Salt preserves the world from rottenness and adds tastefulness, and light shows the world as it really is and God as He is. The question for the listeners was how were they really going to be that salt and light in the face of the moral bankruptcy Christ had so powerfully underscored? His penetrating application of the Old Law and His sharing of new laws stunned them with the knowledge their heart was corrupt, their relationship with God was deeply troubled, and the age they were living in was overwhelming. Christ’s solution was to transport them to an entirely new place. Three new sets of pictures will take them there. The pictures will show them the way to a new heart, a new Father, and a new world. He started with the inner life for that was where the pain was. He used three pictures to draw in their imagination: pictures of a treasure, a lamp, and a master. He first showed them how to recreate the heart. "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. "But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also (Matthew 6:19-21). He used the picture of a treasure, and how the thought of a treasure naturally focuses the attention of the heart, and also how a treasure easily becomes the important object of the heart’s attention. He shared with them a way of managing the life of the heart by choosing the ways of Heaven as the most important reality of existence. The presentation of the picture of a treasure to the imagination of the heart did two things. First, it more than implied that Christ’s critique of the ways of the Pharisees and Judaism was not a final judgment but simply the background for the exposure of the starting place for spiritual reformation. Second, the picture said there was a way out. The heart could rearrange itself if the person in faith surrendered the heart to the imagination. "The lamp of the body is the eye; if therefore your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. "But if your eye is maliciously evil, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness (Mathew 6:22-23)! In the Old and the New Testaments, the eye represented perspective, and the body represented all that is contained within. To the listener who was caught up with the confusion and guilt of the moment, the image of the lamp communicated to the imagination that the way out is through making sure that the perspective is clear. The image served a two-fold purpose: it focused the listener off of the pain within to a new possibility, a new perspective, and second, it gave hope, a new perspective can change the heart and the whole body, or all that is within, will be filled with light. The final picture was that of having a choice between two masters, and the obvious implication that a choice has to be made for the good Master, God. Again the image shifted the person’s orientation from the pain within to the new image in the imagination, and at the same time it opened the door to the new possibility: we can change if we choose the correct master. So the first step in Christ’s strategic use of his listener’s imagination was to give them a new way of perceiving their inner life. He presented the images of the treasure, the lamp, and the masters as a way out from the guilt and confusion the crowd was feeling. Also He did not give a detailed moral pattern as one would find in other parts of the New Testament. Instead His message of hope was the images for the imagination. First, He filled them with pain, then He drew them into their imaginations to provide hope. Jesus knew that when emotion and the imagination collide, the imagination always won. Next He challenged their perceptions of the world they were living in. His audience felt overwhelmed by the power of Rome, the taxes of the tax-gatherers, the pinch of poverty, and the despotism of their governors. The coldness of Pilate the Roman governor was more than matched by the savagery of the reigning Herod. His listeners inhabited an anxious world. In the face of those anxieties, Jesus painted a picture within their imaginations of the world as God the Father and He really saw it. “Stop being anxious,” He said. "Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? "And which of you by being anxious can add a cubit to his life's span? "And why are you anxious about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory did not clothe himself like one of these. "But if God so arrays the grass of the field, which is today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more do so for you, O men of little faith? (Matthew 6:26-30) Placing the pictures of the well taken care of birds and lilies in their imaginations, He described to them what reality was really like. God takes care of the lowly animals and plants, will He not also take care of human who are more significant than the planet itself? Since God feeds the birds and the plants He clothes, will He not do the same and more for those made in His image? In fact, the men had an added advantage over the birds and plants, they could plant, harvest, and spin! But even as they did those things, God still took care of them. Several years ago I saw a striking picture on the back page of a counseling brochure. It was a drawing of a man in a prison cell who was seated on his bed with his head in his hands. He was not moving. Ironically the cell door was wide open, and the chain that held his left hand was ripped off the wall and was resting on the floor. Yet the man was not moving. Everything in the picture said he was free except the slump in his shoulders and his head in his hands, and the condition of his heart. The prisoner first had to imagine that he was free to leave, then he would feel free, and then the first steps would be taken towards freedom. Jesus was giving pictures of freedom to those imprisoned by anxiety, guilt, and confusion. He was painting a picture within their imaginations that would give them the new world they could enter by faith. The beauty of the imagination is that when we focus on the pictures, we enter the world of the pictures and the emotions of our hearts arise to match the pictures. We can emotionally exist within that world, and feel its security and care. But Jesus was not creating a false world for them. Instead He was painting a picture for them of the world as it really was. God did take care of humanity whether humanity trusted Him or not. God’s care did not depend upon humanity’s faith. In verse 30 Christ called them “men of little faith.” In the Gospel of Matthew that was a nice way of saying that they did not have any faith at all. “Men of little faith” occurs in Matthew 6:30; 8:26; 14:31; 16:8. Each time Christ pointed out the non-existence of faith. For example, in Matthew 16:8 He rebuked them for not understanding His warning about the bread of the scribes and Pharisees, and also about not believing His own ability to multiply loaves miraculously. Abba Father The wonderful message of
Christ in the Sermon on the Mount was that God took care of humanity
whether that was believed or not. But in order to step out of
the prison cell of emotions, the listeners first had to allow their
imaginations to embrace Christ’s picture of the world and God’s
care, so as to feel the sensations of being well cared for.
Then, the choice was theirs to embrace that new picture of the world
by faith. Notice the order, picture, entering by faith, then
feelings. "Be asking, and it shall be given to you; be seeking, and you shall find; be knocking, and it shall be opened to you. "For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it shall be opened. "Or what man is there among you, when his son shall ask him for a loaf, will give him a stone? "Or if he shall ask for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? "If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him! (Matthew 7:7-11) Christ informed the listeners that Heaven has a God who as people were praying and asking, God was continually giving, as they were seeking, they were being found by God. He was a God who is continually relating and opening the door of Heaven to those who were knocking. Jesus then gave the reason for God was like a good parent who liked to give good things to his children. He was not a perverse, dysfunctional parent who enjoyed disappointing the child’s heart and not meeting the young person’s needs. In fact, He was better than a good human parent in that He was not tainted by human evil. God the Father aggressively answered pray and aggressively cared. In fact, it was one of the major themes of Christ’s Sermon that God’s care came uninvited. "But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you in order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. (Matthew 7:44-45) God the Father cared for humanity whether humanity had any care or concern for Him. God took care of humanity whether humanity trusted or not. Also God knew what we need before we pray so that does not have to be the great preoccupation of prayer. Heaven did not need a grocery list from us. But our important duty, as Christ pointed out was to hallow or set apart the Name of the Father in Heaven, in other words, to have a clear understanding and picture of the One that we are praying to (Matthew 6:9). It is important to remember that there were only a few references to God as a Father in the Old Testament. Part of Christ’s great mission was to introduce and exposit Him. “No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared Him (John 1:18).” In the Sermon on the Mount, the three major pictures that Christ introduced were a new picture of our inner life, a new view of the world, and a new view of God as a God Father. What we were told of the Father in summary form was: 1. The Father is unseen in Heaven (Matthew 5:4, 6). 2. The Father loves His enemies (Matthew 5:44, 48). 3. The Father rewards those who are not hypocrites (Matthew 6:1, 4). 4. The Father knows our needs before we ask (Matthew 6:8). 5. The Father’s Name needs to be set apart (Matthew 6:9). 6. The Father’s forgiveness is dependent upon our treatment of others (Matthew 6:14, 15). 7. The Father takes care of the world and faithless humanity (Matthew 6:26-30). 8. The Father will give good things to His children who ask Him (Matthew 7:11). 9. The Father only allows those who do His will to enter the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 7:21). Christ was determined to introduce to the hearts of women and men the Person He loved most of all, the Father. It was the Father who was at the center of the pictures concerning the inner life: He is the treasure the heart should value; He is the person the lamp of the inner life should shine upon; He is the master the disciple should choose in the face of the other masters of this world. For the new picture of the world, it was the Father of Jesus who is responsible for it. For it was the Father whose care was consistent even as human beings were not. Ultimately the answer for the crushing confusion of this world, and the ocean waves of guilt that have engulfed the emotions of the listeners was the new picture of the Father in Heaven. Sermon Truths The Sermon on the Mount teaches us some wonderful truths. The answer for guilt, confusion and the other painful emotions that so frequently engulf us is to see ourselves, the world, and God the way Jesus looks at them. That is not the impossible task that we might expect. Instead it starts with allowing the pictures that God provides to enter our imaginations, to allow them to captivate us, to permit the emotions that arise from those pictures to rise in our hearts, and then to act in faith from that experience. Jesus Christ did an amazing piece of teaching with this Sermon. First, he confused His audience with a crushing ten verse Poem of Blessing. Second, He swamped His audience with guilt with His devastating commentary on the teaching and precepts of the scribes and Pharisees - the Rhetoric of Crisis. He crashed into their flimsy teachings like a destroyer into a tugboat. Finally, He showed them the way of deliverance from the pain that He caused through sixteen picture illustrations of the divine perspective that his listeners could step into with their imagination - the Pictures for the Heart. The strategic and spiritually necessary step on the part of his audience was to draw His picture of reality into their hearts through their imagination. At the end of the Sermon, He closed with two houses built upon two different foundations. Both appear exactly the same until the stress of life hits. Then, what was underneath will show itself. In the context of the Sermon that which should be underneath, the foundation, was very much the word pictures that Christ shared. Having the right pictures in the heart is critical. For Christ recognized that in a contest between the emotions and the imagination, the imagination always won. As Christ’s teaching was presented in this chapter, it might have prompted the recognition that you are going through a crisis. It may be an emotional crisis; you do not have emotional stability in your life. Or it could be a crisis of ethics; you realize that you are failing in the area of having Christian character. Or you may have realized that God’s view of you and your life is unknown to you. Or you may be totally complacent, and everything is fine. Well, that’s great but let me assure you that the storms will come, and at that point, we all discover what our life is built on. The next few chapters will tell us what is the foundation of pictures our lives should be built on to face present and coming problems. As you have been reading
feelings of guilt and confusion may have surfaced in your heart.
If so, the next chapter will talk about what the source of those
emotions may well be, and how that can be changed through new
pictures. The next chapter will share how unhealthy family
backgrounds often create negative pictures within that deeply
influence how we function without. Pictures from “God’s family
album” may well be the answer to those pictures from the past!
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In
February, 2005 Harvest House
Publishers published Dr. Eckman’s new book
Becoming Who God intended. It argues that our
emotional life is controlled by the pictures of God, the world, and
ourselves that we have in our hearts. Here is some of the material that
was used to develop one chapter of the new book. It argues that the central reality of the Sermon on the
Mount was the new set of pictures that Christ introduced of God the
Father, the world, and ourselves.
earning
to manage emotions, good and bad ones, is very much like learning to
fly an airplane. Airplanes fly on something invisible; they
are kept up by what the pilots cannot see. Small or large
planes seem to float on the air hung upon invisible wires.
What they do appears magical even after lift or the ability for the
air to push a plane wing upward is explained.
