In this (very lengthy) discussion of Ivan Throne’s The Nine Laws, we’ve covered a lot of ground. You can read my review of the book here, and the rest of the parts are here:
- The First Law: Survival
- The Second Law: Concealment
- The Third Law: Purpose
- The Fourth Law: Endurance
- The Fifth Law: Posture
- The Sixth Law: Freedom
- The Seventh Law: Power
Today we’re going to cover the Eighth law: Preposterousness. We’re going to examine the following applications from a context of Biblical Christianity:
Narcissism: You are the center of your universe.
Machiavellianism: There is no true reality.
Psychopathy: Absence of ego in absurdity.
Ivan’s comments are in bold italics. I respond to each one below.
Firstly, let’s define some things. “Does the world revolve around me?”
When you hear “You’re the center of your own universe!” it’s generally intended as an insult, or as an observation of someone’s self-centeredness. This is the classic definition of Narcissism: everything is about you.
But if I may, let me redirect your understanding of this, as a possible alternative.
What if when I say “I am the center of my universe,” I mean “I am the central gathering point for information that shapes my reality”?
Let me explain. If we believe (wrongly) that we’re in control of everything, then saying we’re the center of our universe means our actions shape our reality.
But if you understand that our reality is shaped by God for us to conditionally experience (and may not match what other people experience) then you realize that, yes, God has shaped and revealed our reality specifically for each of us. We cannot rely on other people’s interpretations of what we’ve experienced to explain what God’s intentions are. God does not reveal our reality to someone else for them to explain to us. That’s not how God works; that’s how cults are formed.
More aptly put: we are not the center of the universe, we are at the center of our experiences in the reality that God is revealing to us. We are responsible for our reaction to it. We are not the cause of it.
Everything is Ridiculous.
The world is preposterous. The very fact that we’re alive is utterly ridiculous.
Now before you get the torches and pitchforks, let me explain: Yes, God is in control of the universe. No, we can’t fully understand God’s methods.
But how preposterous is it that the universe even exists? That the very laws of time and space are malleable by God, and that they can be suspended by God’s will, because He set them in motion in the first place? Why did God choose to make an entire physical universe out of nothing, when the spiritual realm already existed? We simply can’t understand it, and it would drive us crazy to try.
What is illusion? What is reality?
We can only see parts of the universe that God wants us to see.
We can only see what He gives us the understanding for and allows us to see.
This is difficult for us, because people can experience things differently. Especially when God can move in ways that only some people can see, in order to confound the wise (1 Corinthians 1:27).
In that case then, what is reality? It’s what God wants us to see and know to be true, even if only for that moment. God is free to change reality whenever He wants- even if God himself never changes. And God’s reality overrides any preconceived rules we may have concocted to be able to explain things. He is not bound by our “laws” or limitations. Once we grasp this, we begin to realize “reality” is a lot more fluid than we are comfortable admitting. The biggest difference is, reality is not fluid based on differences in human perception.
What lies beyond time and space? What is the point if we are mortal?
We don’t know for sure what lies outside of time and space, because we’ll never be in a position to look through that veil. Even if we could, I severely doubt we could even comprehend it. It is a whole different language of reality. Not bound by our laws of time and space, by definition. God has revealed glimpses of the spiritual realm, but even then, it’s not something we can discern by ourselves. Even though our souls are a part of the eternal spiritual world (which is what differentiates us from animals) we can’t even know it exists until God reveals it to us.
How do you balance acceptance or denial of various forms of “reality” you encounter?
Over time, we train ourselves to catch certain events, and file them away in categories. If we see gravity work, then we file that away as a “truth.” If we find something that’s a hoax, then we file everything similar to it as “false,” even if it’s normally true.
This is the human mind’s way of avoiding being overwhelmed by having to truth-test every single thing we do, every single day. There has to be some level of fabricated trust- some assumption, some line that we can objectively say “I know this to be the case.”
When something breaks that line of expectation, we do one of two things:
- Make excuses as to why it can’t have actually happened, so that our categorization of reality doesn’t get violated
- We force it into preconceived logical containers and dismiss it as something else. Sometimes to our own detriment.
Ultimately, we have a very slim grasp on “reality” and what it means, because we aren’t looking at it from the proper perspective. “Reality” doesn’t always need to be explained: it is designed to be experienced. The “how” isn’t as important as the “why.”
The existence of the mind is a singularity within infinite illusion.
Our very souls are something we cannot grasp. Our physical bodies, and life as we know it, is just the surface layer of a very deep existence. Everything about how we came about and remain alive, to this day, isn’t fully explainable. The fact that Earth is delicately balanced where it is simply boggles the mind at how preposterous it is. The very idea that an omnipotent, omniscient God would care what happens to us is ridiculous. And yet… here we are, balanced between life and death in space, and have had the very Word of God walk in our midst. Is there anything crazier than God Himself coming down to be an example to His lowly creation? It doesn’t make sense, and yet it happened.
Explore the depth of your understanding of how transiently silly the fabric and form of reality are.
Considering how little we understand about the universe and spiritual matters in general, the idea that we could even understand it is silly. I think I understand this better than most, but there’s still a lot out there I don’t trust, understand, or even know about. And compared to what happens to us in the afterlife, why does that even matter? In the long run, the only thing that matters is that we live out whatever purpose God has laid down for us, for His glory, and so our lives will be most useful and impacting (i.e. achieve our purpose). Anything other than that is simply fooling ourselves.
Move from the singularity of stress and anxiety to the infinity of perspective, and thereby gain the calm of the immovable spirit.
Perspective is everything. God’s biggest gift to our brains is the ability to acknowledge the infinite, even if we can’t understand it. To elevate ourselves beyond black and white, physical and material redundancy.
Stress is caused by the belief that bad things are going to happen in the future. God says “worry is a sin” because when you extend your scope of perspective to infinity, then what happens here in this blink of an eye really doesn’t mean much on a timeline of infinity. And worrying assumes someone (or something) besides God is in control.
When we’re stressed, we remember that God is infinitely bigger, and God can either 1. Change our situation, 2. Change us to be able to adapt to our situation, or 3. Take us out of the equation. As a believer, there are no other options.
Consider the most preposterous experience in your life. Absorb that it had infinite (im)probability.
I don’t even know where to start with this one. What have I experienced that’s preposterous? God’s interventions in my life? All the crazy things I’ve survived? Everything. I don’t even know. But even the craziest things had an element to them that God could have overridden at any point, should He have so chosen.
Infinity Isn’t Meant to be Understood.
We technically can’t understand infinity. But in our attempts to wrap our finite brains around it, we’ve assumed that it is possible to understand eventually, if we “elevate our consciousness” or something like that. But the only elevating we get is when our physical bodies die, and we are no longer trapped in finite space.
God reveals Himself as infinite so that we come to lean how much we can’t understand Him. We learn how huge He is, and how amazing and preposterous it is that an infinite Creator would care about His creation on a personal, intimate level. It’s just crazy. And yet it is true, all the same.
Infinity, and the ridiculousness of it, reminds us that we are human, and God is not. It should draw us closer to God, not drag us down into frustration.
If God doesn’t exist, then the idea of infinity is horrifying. Because in the scope of infinity, we are statistically nothing, and make no difference.
But when you admit God is real and infinite- it’s preposterous how much we’re loved by an infinite Creator.
Question Time:
You know this part. We ask ourselves the hard questions, and give honest answers.
What does it mean if all is illusion? And if everything is an illusion, then what is reality?
I kind of addressed this in the first part. “Illusion” implies that someone is trying to fool you. But reality is what you experience, based on and filtered through what you know of God to be true.
What lies beyond time and space and the infinite deep? What is the point if you are mortal?
The physical world is only our temporary residence. At some point we will have, as Shakespeare said, “shuffel’d off this mortal coile.” The point is- as Christians, we aren’t really mortal. We serve a risen Savior. We run the race in such a way as to get our heavenly reward.
How do you balance acceptance and denial of various forms of “reality” you encounter?
This is the hardest part of this chapter to really digest. I think over the last few years, seeing many things that people claimed were “real” that I had doubts about, the only way I could satisfy that condition was either take everything at face value (which I refuse to do), rely on my own ability to discern what is true, or trust that God would reveal it to me if it were true.
Ultimately, I want to get to a place where God shows me clearly what is real and what isn’t. But getting to that place will require dying to self in a big way.
Like Elijah with his servant, who couldn’t see the army God had amassed in their defense:
“And Elisha prayed, “Open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see.” Then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.” – 2 Kings 6:17
I want to be so close to God that I can just ask, and He will reveal the truth to me. I pray that you, as a believer, would desire this as well.