de-Centering Self part two

So how in creation does smacking with an oversized mallet a frog leaping at you through a hole in a table top help you become less self conscious and more Christ like? Unless the frogs are icons of the mean and stupid little things you occupy yourself with in order to shirk love, joy, peace, longsuffering, goodness, gentleness, faith, meekness, and self control then it probably serves the opposite. In other words if you no longer, or perhaps never, considered and enacted the responsibility of honor toward your neighbor before yourself then these frogs: hate, anger, violence, impatience, vileness, rowdiness, doubt, pride, and greed, at least nine frogs in all, need to be swatted regularly and as often as they appear.

de-Centering Self

This msy be more around the bush than on the nail head, and as such take on the appearance of one of those old arcade games where the player stands before a console with a broad flat top into which has been cut nine(or is it twelve,) holes through which randomly, and with increasing frequency and abruptness as the game wears on, appears the target of the unwieldy hammer in the player's hand which is tethered to the console through an elictric cord by which the promptness and accuracy of attack is recorded in the console's scoring mechanism as to whether the gopher, frog, alien or whatever mascot has been designed into that particular console(and oft times even the correct hole) was swatted and swatted in a timely fashion.

Two cases in point:

Adam tended the Garden. In that Garden was that beautiful mal-fruited Tree. Adam tended that Tree. Eve was Adam's helper. When queried by Satan, Eve misstated "If I even so much as touch..." that tree.... Satan leapt fast and struck hard, sinking the fangs of deceipt deep, flushing now hapless Eve's fiber and soul with the toxin of self neediness promoting the senses of self focus, and self importance, and self aggrandizement. Eve's first sinful act was self deception, her sense of self preservation was involved. She overstated the facts. She misstated God's Word. God said tend the Garden--Do not eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, Eve said what she said...responding with self contaminated scripture. Or was it Adam who countermanded God's word for the same reasons, that is not germain here. Animals were necessary to cover the reason for guilt.

Paul from a tradition of Excellence, Success and Discipline, when he was Saul, misunderstood the point, missapplied the devotion, mal-adapted his behaviour in such a way as to serve to disperse, disband and destroy God's new sons. He was carrying his inherited family honor and glory and tradition to new heights. He was gonna be somebody. He really was not intending to change his name...

We have to be still and quiet and focused to hear God's still small voice of devotion, development, and direction. This is a decentering and serves to decenter so that God may be the center not our whims.

Moderate behaviours enacted

As I read the 'to do' section of the chapter on moderation in Getz's book The Measure of a Man I suddenly feel compelled to post on that section of this chapter (which has been present in each chapter but heretofore un-commented on by me). This chapter I realize, largely through his, Getz's, insight, touches on all that we are and all that we think and all that we hope and all the we do. In other words how we enact the submission to God in our lives plays itself out not only in our moderation of behaviour(to which all the other chapters speak), but also in our moderation of judging of others. God as a God of mercy has given us freedom, Christ has freed us from the judgement of condemnation, now we are to do the same for our fellow sojourners in the world. This is a moderation rather than a liberalization. There are still fundamentals that cannot be ignored. But we who are 'raised in the faith' must understand that our understanding and the particular channels by which we recieved that understanding are not the sole bearers of understanding. To become as someone else, in order to seed them with the Doctrine of atoning love, forgiveness and enthusiasm (study that word before complaining, please!)for action we must remember the genesis of that seed and through relationship built on firm foundation begin to understand that fertile soil into which we are planting.
So mostly we must pull the weeds of our own soil, as we might be, by geography of body or mind, unaware of the tender shoots of Spiritual produce in another's garden which would be lost or destroyed by our yanking at the roots of closely proximated or noramlly(to our above referred to limited understanding) apparent weeds, which otherwise (without our having removed them) would have served to increase the Kingdom Build in a facilitative mannner beyond our wildest imagination.

So the log in our own eye before the mote in another's, for it might not even be a mote but the moisture of Living Sparkle we should rather be nurturing.