By John Immel

Lay Down Your Mind (Click here to listen to an Presage Publishing MP3 Audio production)

I can make you lay down your mind down in one article. In the space of a few words, you will forgo your motivation to think. No, I won’t put a gun to your head. I won’t originate any violence. You will freely lay your mind aside and bow to my polity. Here is how I will do it: I will remind you of who you really are. And upon concession, you will then cheerfully surrender your time, talents, and resources.

You are scandalized. How could anyone make such a claim? You are daring me inside now, girding yourself against the onslaught. So very sure that it cannot be done. You are an independent thinker, an original thinker and the master of your own destiny. A free man! A free woman!

It is good that you resist: I count on it.

This is no dare. I am not trying to get your hackles up. You are mustering your every determination because it is in your nature to resist, to refuse, to rebel. It is this very trait on which I count.

I am so confident that I encourage you to think through your every defense: the sum of your intellectual arsenal. Review your every worth. Account for all of your resources that will help you against the seduction of my words.

Do you have it all in your mind, the potency of your virtue to resist and think for yourself? Are you quick with the list? Can you rattle off the counterarguments in a moment? Are you totally persuaded of your individual thinking? Are you fully committed to the accuracy of your mental, moral, and spiritual insight? Is your conscience clear in your defense of self?

Hummmm…we shall see.

Actually, my objective will be surprisingly easy: trivially so.

Most everyone has long since conceded their minds because the foundation for abandoning thinking has long since been sown into the collective psyche. Most of you have regularly listened to men who laid the groundwork deep into your souls. Weekly, the leaders of your spiritual life have drummed rational suspicion into your mind. For many people, their college careers affirmed the futility of thinking. And now you often echo your professors’ claim: the more you learn, the less you know.

You often make excuses for the need to think, the need to focus the mind to grasp specifically the difference between good ideas and bad ideas. You are busy. You have a career, a life, a wife, a husband, and children. Your vigor is given elsewhere. You cannot possibly be faulted for giving your energy to more important things.

I agree; you cannot be faulted. Certainly, I will not fault you. Like so many others who share my goal, I encourage you. The burden is great. Lay down the burden. Let someone else take it up. Let pointy-headed academics bat around their intellectual beach balls; they get paid to do such things. Your time is better spent investing in the immediate concerns of your household and career. Besides, what is the use? In the grand scheme, in light of eternity, the turmoil of momentary mental focus is just not that important.

The Bible, the Qur’an, the Vedan holy writings and many other faiths say that knowledge is burdensome and that man’s sin is the pursuit of knowledge. World religions tell us it is so. With a theme so prevalent, how can it not be a Universal Truth? The use of the mind is a burden at best, and a vain manifestation of evil at worst.

See, you are nodding your head and all I have done is hearken to the foundation already laid. You have begun to concede. Isn’t it better to empty yourself of all thought and achieve that Zen bliss of nothingness?

No, don’t be frustrated. You are wrinkling your brow in silent irritation because you see your will to resist crumbling. The feeling will pass as the truth of my words begins to blossom in your soul and you find a peace at abandoning yourself to the cosmic truth. Indeed, all I am really doing is harvesting the crop that has long since been sown.

A few of you will muster resolve. And the harder you hang on to that determination, the more my case will be made; the more you insist to yourself that you are uniquely qualified to stand against my commentary will only prove your guilt.

Let me ask you this.

Where do you get your mental confidence? And more importantly, where do you get your spiritual confidence? Spiritual depravity means your faculties are flawed. You are flawed because you are selfish. How can you be so sure of yourself?

Is your conscience really clear?

How is it you don’t tremble and shake with the temerity of your heart? Certainly, you must be filled with deceitful pride and corrupting arrogance. The resistance in your heart against my commentary is the measure of your pride.

Your hubris leads you to doubt me. So, I will do you the service of reminding you of your failings, of those things that so easily beset. You need a sense of proportion on your own depravity.

Men, those breasts that you noticed…those long legs that caught your attention…did you honestly think that escaped God’s attention? Those natural urges are the product of your sin nature.

And you women…how could you make your brother stumble? How could you let him see the parts of you that bring him to the brink of eternal damnation? How could you be so selfish as to want a man to notice your beauty? Shouldn’t you want him to see the glory of God, and not the glory of flesh?

You’ve done those things, haven’t you?

We all have. We are all fools before God. It is no shame to admit it. It is a shame to NOT admit it.

See, a few of the most humble are nodding now. You are realizing the measure of your temerity to suggest that you could ever have a clear conscience: a conscience that can defend itself. How absurd a thought, because we are all guilty: we are all defenseless. If a spiritual leader could say of himself that he was a chief sinner, how much greater is our guilt before God?

A few of you still defy the truth of my commentary, my considered judgments.

Do you honestly say to yourself that those are not your sins? Oh foolish man, do not be vain in your thinking. Raise the bar on your standards. If you were truly serious with God, you would eliminate all opportunities to exercise your sinful flesh. Every want, every desire, every expression of self is evidence of sin nature. And that self-thinking that you so dearly want to defend…that is the evidence needed to condemn you.

Don’t you know that your heart is utterly wicked? It leads you astray with every futile effort at good. Check your affections. Are they all for God? Is it all of God and NONE of you?

Are you sure? How about the loyalty to your children? Could that loyalty be idolatry? The overwhelming pressure of your parental love will lead you astray. It will make you blaspheme a Holy God if they were to fall into pain. We both know it’s true. Check your heart and confess your sins to your leaders.

Do you not have a leader? So, you have abandoned fellowship. You are out there by yourself. That is to be expected. Un-teachable people isolate themselves from other believers. And what is also to be expected is your level of deception. Your deception is why you have abandoned the people who are appointed to show you the heart’s sinful roots. How can you help but believe doctrines of devils? People submitted to leaders believe correct doctrines, divine doctrines.

It is possible that you have no one to submit, no one to pour out your soul. I humbly request that you come to me and I will give you rest; I will show you the full measure of your guilt. Together we will study the proper understanding of law and gospel. Together we will come to fully know the true depth of your depravity. It will be safe because under my covering, you will always be reminded of the important things, the truly important things.

You need me. You need me to show you how corrupt you really are. You are guilty.

Do you still muster vanity and say you can defend yourself? Hahaha…How is that possible? How can you be so utterly deceived? Do you not know God opposes the proud? He gives grace to the humble. The humble man and woman submit themselves–all of themselves, holding nothing back–to their leaders.

Have you grown so comfortable with your self lies that you believe yourself independent?   Don’t you know that isolation brings deception? Wanting to be free of the community of believers is selfishness. It means you are not giving your time and talents to the Body of Christ. They are not benefiting from your work. It doesn’t seem like it should be so, but selfishness is bondage. You need leaders to free you from the oppression. You need leaders to organize your talents for the common good.

Did you just say to yourself that you do what is necessary? You practice spiritual disciplines and have accountability with other believers. Really? Where does that validation for this security come from? Who said so?

Oh…you may have reformed your life and had some religious affection. We all tell ourselves to take ease, that we are okay with God. We may sustain the face of that religion in public. But in our home, by ourselves, we know what happens in our hearts–the deceits that pervade its every beating moment.

But have you forgotten the Wrath of God is visited upon the unsuspecting suddenly? When they expect nothing of it, and while they are saying Peace and safety, now they see that those things on which they depended for peace and safety were nothing but thin air and empty shadows.

For it is written “He comes as a thief in the night…” and in another place it says “…Their foot shall slide in due time.” Can you really doubt that God holds you over the pit of hell much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect? He abhors you and is dreadfully provoked. His wrath towards you burns like fire. He looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire. He is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in His sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in His eyes than the most hateful, venomous serpent is in ours.

It is your pride that will send you to the depths of the pit. It is your arrogance that will pave the path to your infernal destruction. Can you still muster the utter temerity to suggest that you are a man or woman of clear conscience? That you are a man or woman with a mind that can justify itself? Can you really?

Okay…This I dare you. Say it in the assembly of the people. Say that you have a clear conscience. Say that your mind is qualified to defend your wants, desires, and value. If you have been so blinded by your great pride before God and cannot heed righteous correction, stand bold in your utter depravity and proclaim it for all to hear.

Is that the silence of assent I hear?

Accept this truth. There is no defense of your Guilt, which means there is no defense of your self, and to try is to sow disaster on your soul. God metes out justice as he sees fit. He is not mocked. Whatever a man sows, that shall he reap.

You dare to reject the gifts He has given unto men? He gave leaders and rulers for discipline and for government of the people. It is the job of leaders to organize the people: their time, talents, and resources. This is how the community carries the glorious truth of Brotherly love and equality in all things to the world.

This effort will demand much. In the Christian faith tradition, Christ suffered for his fellow man. We must therefore also suffer for our fellow man. His sufferings were greater than we could ever endure. He gave the cry of the damned so that we would be spared. Now it is our time to fulfill our part of sacrifice.

Those things that you have, those material possessions of comfort are indulgences that need to be destroyed. Those interests that do not support the community are stumbling blocks that hinder the race you were called to run. Rededicate your life to service.

Your personal pleasure is not the leading consideration. In light of eternity, there is no personal interest, no personal pleasure that can compare. Lay down the temporal so you might embrace the eternal.

That is right, give up crass materialism and decadent consumptions lavished on your flesh. Embrace momentary sufferings so that you might have an eternal joy. Submit your substance to those of us who must bear the burden of administration. Let us distribute for the greater good.

Notice, I did exactly what I said. I originated no violence. I never fired a shot. All I did was show you who you really are. You are guilty. You are without defense. You willingly lay down your mind.