◄ The Only Reality ►

When you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted. (John 21:18 ESV)

The "eyes which are as a flame of fire" are looking for reality. They pierce through many things. In the first place, they pierce through traditional and formal religion or "Christianity." Their interrogation is Is your religion a matter of attachment or adherence to a system, a historical tradition, a family inheritance; and so on? Or is it born is it a birth in you; is it something that has happened to you; is it your very life, your very being? Secondly and I concentrate more especially upon this for the moment they pierce through temperament and disposition. They demand to know whether the reason why you are where you are, are concerned for what you are concerned for, are connected with what you are connected with, and are disposed as you are, is because your particular temperament leans that way. You are artistic and mystical in your tastes and constitution: therefore you choose or make your religion after your own image. Your temperament is melancholic, and so the more abstract, profound, serious, intense, introspective, and speculative, appeals to you and finds a natural response in you. You make God, Christianity, Christ, the Bible, after your image.

Or again, you are of the practical temperament. To you everything is only of value as it is "practical." You have no patience with these contemplative people. You are irritated by the "Marys," for "many dishes" are your concern. To you, how the end is reached is of much less importance than the end itself. You are not bothered much with imagination, and you would put all the value on things done how much there is actually to show for your day. Your God and your Christianity are entirely, or almost entirely, of the practical kind, after your own image. And so we could go on with all the other temperaments. But this will not do, for Christ is not any one of these; He is different. He may combine the good in all, but that does not wholly mean Divine nature. He is different. All this is the human soul, but the essential nature of Christ and true Christianity is of the Divine Spirit it is heavenly! If new birth means anything, it means this, that another nature and disposition is born into the believer, so that he or she is "carried whither they (naturally) would not."