Stewardship

The Ultimate Delusion

by Terry Barlow
10/29/18
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The ultimate lie at the root of all deception is that we are the source of our own lives.  The truth is that we do not and cannot keep ourselves alive moment to moment any more than we can give ourselves the gift of life in the first place.  The will to live can certainly add months or even years to a life just as the lack of a will to live can subtract time from a life, but that is different from being the actual source of life for ourselves.  We are not the originators of our own breath, and heartbeat or pulse.  Rather, we are dependent beings, depending on a source outside ourselves for our next breath and moment of life.

In other words, we are not self existent beings.  But part of our human condition is to live under the general illusion and presumption that we are the self existent sources and givers of our own lives, until some crisis event intrudes into our lives bringing us crashing down to earth,  as it shocks us into the realization that it just isn’t so.  We did not create ourselves after all.

Another way of understanding this reality is through the hospital analogy of life support.  There is a sense in which we are all on life support in an ICU unit, and the plug could be pulled any second.  Were this to occur our lives would quickly ebb away, and we would be helpless to prevent it.  This awareness need not be a morbid or depressing one.  On the contrary, it points and guides us toward leading lives of constant gratitude for the continuation of our lives and for all the opportunity and enrichment that is involved in that.

This is only one more way of saying and seeing that there is a God and that we are undoubtedly NOT that God.  To believe that we are or that any of us is that God is the ultimate illusion as well as the ultimate delusion, and a damning one at that.  It is related to believing unconsciously and mistakenly that we will never die, that death is only some terminal event that happens to other people and never to us.  In other words one is supposing in that case that one is immortal, and thus, one is taking to oneself a divine attribute, another way of playing God.  But there is only One that is self existent and immortal. ("...Who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light."  1 Timothy 6, v.16)

"For as the Father has life within Himself, so also has He given the Son to have life within Himself." (John 5, v.26)