1 Peter Lesson 6 Overrules the Senses
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A STUDY OF FIRST PETER: THE RHETORICAL UNIVERSE
BY J. MICHAEL STRAWN
PHASE #5: OVERRULES THE SENSES (1 PETER 1:8-9)
INTRODUCTION AND TERMINOLOGY:
It is somewhat paradoxical that God would grant us five senses by which we can access the world, but then ask us to operate on the “sight” that only He can grant. In the same way, we are given natural urges–sexual and otherwise–that must be dealt with as factors in our lives, but are not allowed to rule over what God tells us. It all comes down to the question: what is telling us the truth about any given situation–our own senses or information from God? Our wants and desires or the purposes of the Kingdom? Our analysis of a scenario and our resultant plans for dealing with it, or what God says is happening and should happen in response?
Real belief, as we shall see, is not a matter of opinion, but of choice. Not all beliefs are valid no matter how dearly held. Truth has a basis, and that basis must be revelation, not anything the world tells us through our senses, our experiences, nor any consensus no matter how seemingly-unanimous.
The analogic mind, as we have seen from previous lessons, is that which derives both information and guidance from “across the hinge” of the unseen but nonetheless superintendent dimension where God reigns supreme. Our context, on the other hand, is the immediate circumstance where we find ourselves–and, by extension, context can also signify an entire complex of situations that make up a person’s life.
ELEMENTS OF THE THEMATIC:
The thematic illustrates the way that the analogic mind can surround and overrule the senses. From that subsuming action is produced three qualities that can themselves involve the senses, but are not controlled by them: love, belief, and joy, which are acontextual, not derived from the circumstances in which they occur. They are very real and available to the believer, but they are anchored in and grow out of the overruling of the senses, not the senses themselves.
The analogic mind is more than just a perception or perspective–it is a state of mind. Much has been taught about the concept of world view, but the analogic mind is more than just a world view. The concept of a world view comes from anthropological teachings–something we adopted and adapted to religious teachings without much success, because spirituality involves much more than fitting ideas into a worldview gridwork that makes sense to us. But Scripture shows us that their are only two mental states of being, analogic and contextual.
The great superiority of analogic thinking to the concept of a Christian worldview is that while worldview thinking only categorizes the Christian mind, analogic thinking has the power to overrule the senses (and their usually-misleading ability to detract from spiritual things.)
The “life rope” of faith is the analogic mind’s ability to overrule the senses. We must do that, because a life of trying to placate the senses or trying to use them as a baseline for analyzing our problems–that kind of life will fail. Now, it’s true that our senses are the avenue by which all experiences enter our minds. But we must remember that what we carry around in our heads are not the senses nor the objects that the senses perceive–but rather representational symbols. The analogic mind provides for the believer a special set of symbols by which the believer processes the information entering his mind from the outside world. That’s why we can, through faith, believe in things which are inherently beyond our immediate or personal circumstances–such as the life of Christ, for instance, whom we have not seen (senses) but nonetheless love (analogically-derived emotion.)
BIBLICAL TEXT:
“Though you have not seen Him, you love Him; and even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”
–1 Peter 1:8-9
GENERALIZATIONS DERIVED FROM THE THEMATIC:
1) Love, belief, and joy are acontextual entities which are anchored in and grow out of the analogic mind, not out of the context. Because we can achieve these precious qualities without changing the circumstances themselves, we can focus not on the circumstances but rather on the intelligence by which we apprehend the circumstances. The analogic mind seeks to change his state of being, not his surroundings. While we must live in this contextual world, that doesn’t mean we have to operate mentally on the basis of what we see, touch, smell, feel, and hear. The love, belief, and joy available to us are anchored in the eternal.
The therapeutic community spends its energy in motivating people to take control of situations–usually by changing them in some way so that they are more amenable to the senses. In finances, in health, in relations, solutions are sought through modifying the context. However, the fertile field of change isn’t in the context, but rather in the heart of the believer who’s found in Christ all he needs. His faith is a unity between the two dimensions, and inherencies (whether or not he likes something or agrees with someone) fade in comparison to the riches of the analogic view.
We might ask, where does a truly healthy personality originate? Our sinful world is certainly no font of such health. Just being able to “function” within this sinful context, similarly, is not a source of true mental health. Proof of this is seen in the fact that some in the therapeutic community would evaluate Jesus Christ as dysfunctional because He wasn’t successful in a worldly sense, and seemed to irritate people so much that they finally sought and took His life. Jesus’ willing sacrifice of His life wasn’t a suicide–it was a rescue that went to extreme measures to bring human minds into contact with God.
2) While the qualities of love, belief, and joy might not be derived from the context, they certainly cannot be characterized as irrational. It’s true that Peter’s listeners would not have liked their sufferings, but he called them to an analogic mindset that would help them ultimately to overcome them. This is nothing like Buddhism, where all is seen as illusion; or Christian Science, which encourages people to ignore unpleasant aspects of life. Instead, Peter calls believers to face their sufferings with a prepared analogic mind. This is not self-deception; for only analogically can one see the complete picture –plenary reality–unfragmented and fully-faceted. Such things as bio-feedback and transcendental meditation, too, form a closed loop within the context and allow no analogic information about the true nature of such things as suffering.
Operating beyond one’s senses is axiomatically operating beyond one’s own competence as well. The love, belief, and joy available to Peter’s listeners and to us as well come not from the context, and not from a blithe ignoring of our surroundings. They come from beyond ourselves, to comfort, guide, and help us within the context.
3) Overruling the senses does not imply nor require an escape from the context. Many times people say, “I could be happy if ——in my life were to change.” The world believes that by changing the context, you can become happy. If you can’t change the situation, the world teaches, escape from it through entertainment or other distractions. Various types of “coping mechanisms” ranging from deep breathing to prayer are offered as solutions to “unchangeable” situations.
Peter’s listeners, however, were never told to “cut and run.” Instead, they knew that God had allowed their suffering to take place, that it had purpose outside of the context, and that they were forbidden to deal with it by operating on their senses and the solutions offered thereby. Love, belief, and joy, on the other hand, don’t arise from unpleasant circumstances yet have the inherent ability to carry us beyond those circumstances.
3) It’s a fact that overruling the senses automatically generates a different temporal philosophy. What we call a “temporal philosophy” is the attitude which each person uses to understand and live in his or her world. Children, for instance, “catch” our temporal philosophy in the home, from TV, from friends at school. It is our responsibility to consciously pull our children out of the lure of worldly temporal philosophy so that they can achieve “the goal of our faith, the salvation of your souls.” The Bible’s temporal philosophy isn’t co-equal with others, a cafeteria choice among many. Instead, the Bible calls us to walk away from our senses and the way that they try to force us to define rationality in the terms of the world. The Bible provides for us axioms to contrast with worldly ones, by which the Bible operates as an absolute symbolic universe. There can be no inherent harmony between our heads and the external world, and we must resist the notion that if something harmonizes with our senses, it must be all right (a theory of harmonics.)
One Biblical axiom, for instance, is that we cannot please Him without faith. Unfortunately, we have redefined “faith” as either a body of beliefs (Jude 3) or as simply doctrine, ethics, and soteriology–instead of as a temporal philosophy that should guide our thoughts, actions, and hopes. The unfortunate underdimensioning of the concept of faith hasn’t been capable of even maintaining those limited qualities it clings to–as evidenced by the doctrinal and soteriological confusion and ethical disrepair in which we find the Church today.
It’s an unfortunate legacy of the Copernican revolution that we have surrendered to the concept that if the Bible disagrees with what our senses tell us, we must either disregard it or read it allegorically. We have done this through periodization (“Those things happened way back there but don’t affect us today”) and sometimes outright dismissal of the text as something that can’t be understood and/or applied today.
All this error originates from reading the Bible commutatively–believing that we can judge and ameliorate its teachings based on how “logical” and applicable they seem to our own context. But the analogic mind’s function is to let the Bible operate as agent, not as patient; and to learn to overrule our senses. The Christian life, after all, is not about pleasing the senses, but about achieving salvation. It’s not a matter of self-deception and trying to “tune out” our circumstances; but rather using the analogic mind to find out how God is reigning over our circumstances rhetorically in order to produce love, belief, and joy–in spite of our circumstances.
This is something far superior to “positive mental attitude” with love, belief, and joy as goals. It is instead a mechanism by which God transforms us as surely as He formed the universe–all by means of the Word. Time is the carrier by which the interests of God, not the demands of our senses, are accomplished. Our temporal philosophy removes us from the material world in a way that redefines rationality and irrationality. It allows eternal concerns to overrule the temporal, whose native intelligence is sensorial.
Don’t look for love, belief, and joy in the context, Peter would tell us. They’re not there. People are happy or unhappy in good and bad situations. The qualities God offers the analogic mind are not the result of being well-adjusted or well-medicated. The are the result of a specific type of intelligence, available only through the grace of God.
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