The Simple Answers… To Life’s Most Important Questions.
Bible Study Course Lesson 4 – 2
You are a soul. You are a soul, living in a body, with a conscience for a counsellor and a heart for a servant, who communicate with you in your mind. But you are not your body. You live in it, exactly like God lived in His temple, and wants to live in us! And this body is expendable (2 Corinthians 5:2-4). And while, obviously, what it needs matters… it matters a lot less than your beast tells you they do!
I stress this because it is important when you think “I”, you ask “is that me, myself, or I?” You are a soul. Can souls be hurt by fire? Matthew 10:28. Souls cannot be burned in fire. YOU cannot be burned in fire! Let me put it this way. Let’s say you’re riding a horse, and you need to get somewhere on an urgent mission. And 3/4 of the way there, your horse gets tired. Does that mean you are tired? Of course not. He is tired – and he tells you so, by walking slower, trying to rest more often, and so on.
And you should care about this, of course. But ultimately, his tiredness is his own problem. As long as it doesn’t do him permanent injury, what you need matters more to you, right? And even if it does cause him permanent injury, is the life of a horse worth more than your mission? Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. That’s a choice you would make, and then force him to live with! Your soul is made of spirit; can spirit be seen and felt (and therefore harmed) by physical things? John 3:5-8. Obviously, we are not yet born of spirit; but we have a spirit living inside our flesh; trapped there, making it alive. For without the spirit, the body is dead (James 2:26).
So you – the real YOU, your soul – has never been cold. It has never been hot. It has never been in pain. When you miss a meal, your soul doesn’t feel hungry. Your soul doesn’t get sleepy at night. When your SOUL sleeps… you’re dead! (Ephesians 5:14). If you have a bad toothache, and you’re struggling to make decisions… believe me, I get that. But souls don’t get toothaches because souls have no teeth! Your BEAST has a toothache, and your BEAST feels the pain. And it then tells you, very loudly, about that pain. And this is a good thing, something you should want to know!
But sometimes, there are more important things in the world than your beast’s pain or discomfort. That pain, like any pain is happening to your beast and you should acknowledge it, and do everything you can to fix it just as if it were a hurt pet… but also remember that this isn’t happening to your soul because nothing physical can cause it pain! 2 So imagine that we were traveling together, and you had a toothache. I would feel bad for you, but I wouldn’t feel the toothache. And I wouldn’t hear your beast complaining about it unless your beast makes your soul tell me about it incessantly!
And if you did, I would tell you how bad I feel for you, but that if you don’t shut up and stop distracting me, we’re all going to die. My emotional distance from your problem allows me to look at the big picture and make judgments that affect the whole group, because I can see more than your own temporary pain. And obviously, the point is that you could have done the same thing, if your soul actually ruled your beast. It is possible for the soul to tell the beast in agony “I hear you, and I’m doing what I can… but right now I need you to shut up so I can work on solving the cause of this problem!”
And it is possible for a properly ruled beast to trust you enough to take its problems away and leave your soul in peace because your soul is not the one in pain and shouldn’t have to hear about it if it doesn’t want to! This may sound a bit far-fetched to you, but have you never been distracted from pain by something else? By being busy, by being entertained, or even by having another, bigger pain? It is this “distraction” of your soul which prevented you from feeling the pain by dividing your attention away from the beast’s nagging!
All I’m saying is, what happens to all of us by accident, you can learn to do consciously. To be like God, your soul must learn how to rule beasts; your own, the beasts of the souls you’re responsible for… even the Beast of the world. To do that, you have to dissociate yourself from the beast and the spirit; divide the “I’s” in your mind, and recognize who wants what – and why. And then with this new, more objective perspective YOU, your soul, should decide which demands are important… and which are not.
WHAT THE BEAST IS LIKE
Animals are ruled by their base natures, as a rule. They care about food, comfort, mating, and sometimes territory, their children, and in rare cases their masters – because these are things that can be considered part of their larger “self”. As I’ve said many times, this is not evil, for which of us is not interested in themselves? Why did God create the world? Revelation 4:11. Why does God give us the Kingdom? Luke 12:32. If it is for God’s pleasure that we were created, clearly that’s a selfish motive, isn’t it? So being selfish isn’t wrong. It’s just… well, selfish.
Are we made inherently evil? Ecclesiastes 7:29. Are babies born good or evil? Isaiah 7:16. What are they then? 1 Corinthians 3:1. Babies are carnal – a poor English translation that means “fleshly”, that is “having the nature of flesh, i.e. under the control of the animal appetites” (Thayer’s Lexicon). Notice what that said… being carnal is having a nature under control of ANIMAL appetites. Beast appetites! Yet it is not evil to be hungry. It is merely selfish – thinking of the desires of the flesh. Yet it is evil to take food from others to satisfy that selfishness (Proverbs 13:25).
Nor is it evil to desire rest – but it is evil to sleep when you should be working, and doing your fair share (Proverbs 20:13, Proverbs 6:10, etc.). So it is not wrong to be selfish, but it is wrong to let it control you, and lead you to take from others. Where does our motivation come from? Proverbs 16:9. The beast is the source of our motivation. It’s why we get out of bed in the morning; to go to work; make money; feed our families; meet girls; get smarter; get attention; even if it’s just to go pee, that’s still a beast reason (peeing is, after all, purely selfish).
The problem is not the selfishness of peeing; it’s peeing on the toilet seat which bothers others. To be more precise, it bothers someone else’s beast when they sit on it. Therefore, since their beast doesn’t want it done, your beast wouldn’t want it done to you, which makes it a sin. None of this ever occurs to the beast; the thought of someone else’s needs isn’t supposed to come from the beast. It’s supposed to come from the soul (Psalms 35:12-14). Knowing what’s right and wrong isn’t supposed to come from the beast; it’s supposed to come from the spirit (Romans 8:4).
What the beast says is important, but it’s only one voice, and the least important voice, of the I’s. Yet it is also the loudest voice, the one which shouts down all the other voices purely by virtue of not caring about anything but its own selfish needs. Think of it like a nuclear family; like the soul, the father is the strongest and highest in authority in the Biblical family. And like the spirit, the mother is the calmer voice of reason; far more likely to say “should” than “want”. And like the beast, children are born unabashedly, unapologetically selfish.
Like the beast, the baby is far weaker than either parent. Physically, they both have absolute power over it. Yet it will scream and squall for hours on end, until you’d think its throat would fall off, to get its way. And that’s your typical person today; their mind is a harassed, sleep-deprived family ruled over by the squalling baby of their heart. Should the baby rule the house? Of course not. Yet do children rule over most houses today? Absolutely. Exactly as God said they would in Isaiah 3:4; and how does that end? Isaiah 3:12. And what should these parents do? Proverbs 29:17.
RULING THE BEAST
So like children, the beast must be ruled. But “rule” can mean a lot of different things. Is it given a vote, as in a democracy? Is it oppressed, as in a dictatorship? Is it an equal, as in communism? The current state of most people’s minds is anarchy; the beast does pretty much whatever it wants. On the other hand, when you think about ruling it, you probably assume since it is selfish, it should be oppressed, prevented from speaking or influencing the soul in anyway. This is, indeed, what many religions in history have done; the Greek ascetics, the Catholic hermits, the Indian gurus; what does God say about denying the beast? Colossians 2:18-23.
Note that denying the flesh just to deny the flesh is not righteousness! The BBE renders the last part “But not one of them is of any value in combating the indulgence of our lower natures.” How should you treat your flesh? Ephesians 5:29. How does a righteous mean treat his beast? Proverbs 12:10. Clearly, that verse is talking about a literal beast – but remember, the Bible’s symbols are true on every possible level! If you are supposed to care about the life of your goat, how much more should you care for your own body’s needs?
Naturally, the beast will use these scriptures to try and prove to your soul that it “needs” more cake, that it “needs” a rest, or that it “needs” a new toy. Which is why that very same scripture goes on to say “the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel”. What happens when you don’t correct your child “out of love”? Proverbs 13:24. What happens if you are too “tenderly merciful” to do that? Proverbs 29:15.
That describes just about every child in the world today. So “regarding the life of your beast”, caring about what it wants and needs is necessary; but being so soft-hearted you give it whatever it asks for, demands, or pouts until it gets, will create an evil, stubborn, spoiled beast! And that will only make the beast more unhappy in the long run, it will bring shame to you, the soul who let it happen! The soul’s job is to make good decisions. To be a wise ruler of your heart (and your spirit, but that’s another lesson).
Your soul is the king of your body, and a good king listens to all of his subjects… but makes decisions that are best for everyone, regardless of how someone bribes, threatens, or yells; and regardless of how he, personally, feels about them (Isaiah 33:15-17).
DESPERATELY SELFISH
The heart is selfish, and absolutely unprincipled – it will do literally whatever it has to do to get what it wants (Jeremiah 17:9). The heart is deceitful. It will lie to you. It will even try to tell you it’s the soul talking! But note that word “desperately”; I’ve worked with a lot of beasts, human and animal, and when their heart is set on something they pursue it with a desperation that is beyond belief, saying and doing the most absurd things, things that the same person, at any other time, would know are idiotic!
For example, while trying to teach a student to swim, one of them got so panicked their beast said “I can’t breathe! No, you don’t understand, I have to get out, I can’t breathe!!” They were standing in knee-deep water at the time. A different student in the same situation, clearly terrified, when they saw I wouldn’t let them out said “just wait, I have to fix my hair!!” (Her hair was in a ponytail, and wasn’t even wet yet). Another time, the second we got in the water, she said “I have to get out, I’m really thirsty” (she had a drink just before we got in the water… and no one dies of thirst that fast).
These are all just a panicking beast desperate to avoid dying, backed into a corner where it felt there was no other way to save its life. And despite the fact there was never any real danger, not even a little bit, their fear of the water was so great that their beast took over their mouth and spoke for them, without the soul even realizing it. When the beast wants something, or is afraid of something, or hates something, it will say absolutely anything to get its way, because it is desperately wicked! Not wicked by nature, but when something gets between it and perceived safety or between it and its lust, it is desperately wicked.
Another time, one of them wanted to marry a girl (who wanted nothing to do with him, by the way) who didn’t know anything about the Truth. Trying to get him to realize why he really wanted to do that (loneliness and insecurity, not love for a girl who wasn’t even dating him), he kept insisting “no, you don’t understand, I just want to teach her the truth!”… (is that what the young people are calling it these days?) Even after we pointed out that he didn’t have to marry her to do that, he – or rather, his beast speaking for him – kept arguing for hours about why marrying this girl was the right thing to do “so she can learn the truth”. Later, after his beast got tired of arguing a fight it couldn’t win, and his soul came back, he was stunned at the stupidity of his earlier statements.
The beast will always try the easiest, most sensible justifications first, of course. But if the logical, rational excuses aren’t working, it will say absolutely anything that comes into its mind, however absurd it sounds. And if you keep applying pressure, it will panic and grow ever more incoherent until it is ultimately just babbling and… well, just an animal. These are things people would never believe they would say, and after they calm down and their soul is back in charge, they’re surprised they said such things… because THEY wouldn’t say them! Because they’re things that no soul would say!
A soul is smart, in the way that a computer user is smart. Which is to say, they do a lot of dumb things but ultimately they’re better judges of things than the computer itself is. The spirit is smart, in the way that Windows knows HOW to do a lot of things, but not when to do them. But the beast is dumb, just like the BIOS – it’s just smart enough to keep the machine running. And this biological machine we call a body has built-in programming to protect it; fear of water, fear of big things, fear of unknown things in shadows, fear of falling. And when the soul tells it to get in the water, it is by nature terrified. And that’s fine.
But when their beast doesn’t trust their soul, the beast gets so agitated that it takes over. It’s like when a rider drops the reins as a horse gallops away. The rider would never do these things or go these places that the horse takes him… but he’s no longer driving the body! And this can actually be a good thing; in crisis situations, people are capable of incredible feats. Afterwards, they may not remember them at all. We often say “I was running on pure instinct”, which is to say, the beast has taken over and is doing its best to keep him alive. And that’s a great thing… when someone actually is in danger.
But what happens when the beast isn’t actually in danger? Or when the soul would be better at solving this problem, and the beast yanks away control anyway? Acts 7:54. What was “cut” there? The heart. The beast! A rational human, with their soul in charge, would have simply exiled them, or delivered them to the Romans for sedition, or something; but these people were so powerfully condemned by the soul of Stephen that their heart overwhelmed their soul and they were reduced to biting him like animals!
When your beast takes over completely – whether because of injury, hunger, fear, or rage, they become beasts; this is what creates mobs, who collectively are far dumber, meaner, and more violent than the people who are in them. This is not talking about a zombie apocalypse movie! This is what happens when ordinary people like you are pushed into a corner with no way out! It’s just like watching a cornered animal lash out – in that moment, they don’t care if they’re entangled in barb wire, ripping their legs open! They don’t even notice it at the time, for their anger or terror is all they have room for in their tiny beast mind.
TEACHING THE BEAST
You cannot change your heart into something more than what it is – a selfish and not terribly smart creature. But you can teach it that the best way to receive its selfish desires is to obey you! This is why this understanding is so important, because as always, you already know everything you need to do! If you’ve ever trained a dog to do tricks, taught a bird to speak, or ridden a horse, you understand how this works. The ONLY thing you were missing is the realization that you had a beast inside of you! Ecclesiastes 3:18 is worth repeating again.
When you train a horse, you’re not making it love you. When you tame a squirrel, you aren’t earning its friendship. It’s nice to pretend that you are, but you know you’re not. You’re holding out food, while not making threatening movements so it won’t run away, until eventually its hunger or curiosity becomes greater than its fear. The beauty of training your own beast, is that it really can’t run from you. So you simply have to teach it the best way to get what it wants is obey you. You’re using its own selfishness against it. Training a dog teaches it that if it sits, it gets a treat. If it rolls over, it gets a tummy rub.
But the training of animals is always relative. Is a horse you need spurs to ride as well trained as one who rides by the touch of the reins alone? Is a horse that needs a bit in its mouth to amplify your orders as good as a horse that can be ridden without tack at all? It’s fine for people to initially obey God for the loaves and the fishes (John 6:26). It’s fine to obey God initially because of fear (Proverbs 9:10). But ultimately, we have to grow beyond that (1 John 4:18).
Likewise, your horse or dog or child should reach a point where they no longer need either the treat or the bit to obey you. They will obey you out of habit, because that’s just what they do – they know you, and know that the treat is implied, even if no treat is given. Just never forget, it obeys you for its own selfish reasons.
And if your beast disagrees with you, and your soul makes him do it anyway, and he has a good time in spite of himself… don’t hesitate to rub it in that he’s having fun even though he didn’t want to come! Thus underlining your point, which is that good things follow when, and only when, he obeys you. Remember, horses and dogs and other beasts are your servants – your word should be law to them. And how should you treat your servant? Luke 17:7-10. Likewise, your body is your soul’s servant – and it needs to know who is boss (1 Corinthians 9:27).
Your beast matters, but you are the soul, the lord of that beast, and you need to make sure it knows that. This, too, is the golden rule – for the horse needs to obey you, for his own good! For if your horse makes you, the soul, act evilly… God will kill your soul and the beast with it! The golden rule applies for another reason as well – for the laborer, in this case the beast, is worthy of his hire. Not a reward – for even if he obeys you, he has simply done his duty, and is an “unprofitable servant”. But even an unprofitable servant is worthy of his hire for a job well done – and what is the beast worthy of? 1 Timothy 5:18.
The beast is worthy of his good food and his creature comforts if he has worked for them. Not worthy of living like a king, of course; but worthy of comfort and good things. And so, by the golden rule, it is necessary for you to rule the beast for his own sake; for if he doesn’t obey you, he won’t get that which he loves (1 Kings 10:8).
ESTABLISHING CONTROL
The first thing you must do when you get on a horse is establish who is in charge. Should you be like that horse? Psalms 32:9-10. If you don’t rule him, he rules you, and you effectively become him! You may be doubting everything I’ve said here. “I’m not a beast! I’m a person!” you may be thinking. Which is, again, why I like Ecclesiastes 3:18 so much, since people believe exactly the opposite of what it says! But how can you prove that your beast doesn’t obey you? And how can you make him obey you? How can you prove your soul is in fact dominant? Easy! Do things the soul likes and the beast hates!
When you are training a horse, you always use a bit in its mouth – something that gives you a way to correct it by causing it some minor discomfort and to give it a reason to care what pleases you and what doesn’t. It is selfish – if there is neither pleasure nor pain in obeying you it will simply ignore you!
Does God see much difference between horses and people? Proverbs 26:3. God must use a whip on a rebellious horse, just as He must use a rod on the back of a fool. That’s why when David was foolish, he said he was “as a beast” (Psalms 73:21-22). Notice that it was his heart that was grieved, his heart that caused him to behave like a beast! So basically, you need to put a “bit” on your carnal nature; something that you can use to turn it right and left. Something it doesn’t like, but which will not seriously harm it. This means discomfort and self-denial for your beast, and that your soul must be firm and unrelenting.
There are many ways to do this. One of the simplest and Biblically-approved ways is fasting. Your soul doesn’t mind fasting; because it doesn’t eat food! But your beast worships a different god (Philippians 3:19). By denying it food, you are defiling its altar, polluting its idol! Your beast likes to eat, and doing without food is a quick way to teach it that it doesn’t HAVE to get its way all the time. That just because it yells “I’m hungry!” you don’t necessarily have to give it food. Who is in charge, again?
So to establish your dominance, start with a short fast; a day the first few times, then work your way up to longer fasts as necessary. But whatever you do, pick a reasonable goal you know your beast can do but under no circumstances back off of that goal until you accomplish it! (Isaiah 55:11). A fasting beast is a weak beast, and it’s easier to rule it and think more objectively because it’s simply too weak to argue after the first 4-5 hours. But your soul doesn’t notice that it’s fasting because IT isn’t fasting! So if “you” feel bad, then “you” is still your beast!
On the other hand, if you’ve distanced yourself from your beast, fasting is an excellent opportunity to see that – because your soul will be perky and awake, even while your body is weak and thinks it’s dying. Another way to dominate your beast is cold water. No liquid water will cause permanent injury in a brief period. In fact, cold hydrotherapy is an excellent way to improve your general health; Google it. But that’s a side benefit – the point for this lesson is are you in charge? Then tell your beast to take the coldest shower you have. Your beast will not like it.
It will whine and complain and try to negotiate it into a shorter time, or not so cold, or whatever. Are you in charge, or not? Would you let your horse talk to you that way? So tell your beast “want to whine about 70F (21C) water when I tell you to get into it? Fine – let’s try 60F (15C)!” Your beast needs to learn, not only to take your commands, but to do so gracefully and even cheerfully! Many times I’ve gone swimming in water flowing out from under a glacier, only a degree or two above freezing, which quite literally had chunks of ice floating past in it.
My beast didn’t like it, and complained – so I did it three times, until it stopped complaining. Fully underwater. And as cooold as it was, it felt great afterward! I’m not saying I stayed a long time – that could have been dangerous, and I’m not trying to kill my beast – but I will not be governed by an animal, even if that animal is inside of me! (1 Samuel 17:26 expresses the sentiment well, albeit in a different context.)
You’re in training to become a child of God, a spirit being. No spirit being can allow themselves to be pushed around by an animal, because if you can’t even rule over an animal, you can never rule over people! But you don’t have to jump into a glacier to prove the point to your beast. The cold water in most showers is enough to start. Turn it on all cold and walk into it. Don’t let your beast flinch – and don’t let it hold its breath. Just walk in there, stay calm, and breath normally. Set an egg timer to 1 minute before you get in, so you don’t cheat and hop right back out.
Make a commitment to doing it, and don’t back out! Do it tonight! Do it now! But do it, and see if your beast is in charge, or if you are! And once your beast does it for the full time your soul chose beforehand, as measured by the timer – reward it with hot water! If the water is properly cold, you will not be able to breathe normally the first few times. Your beast will be so clenched up, so scared and hyperventilated, so tense you will barely be able to stand there. But you should be able to calmly walk in there, wash as normal, and leave, and you can do that if your soul is in charge. I can. So can you… if your soul is the one calling the shots. So work on it.
DENYING THE FLESH
You’re not trying to be mean to your body, and this is not a way of worshiping God through denying the flesh. This is not about denying the flesh for its own sake, this is establishing mastery over the flesh in a practice field so that when it REALLY matters, you can trust it to obey you without flinching, without hesitation, and without question.
Jesus proved that the carnal heart can be perfectly ruled (Hebrews 2:16-17, 4:15). Note I said ruled, not oppressed. Jesus cared about the life of His beast, for He was a righteous man! He didn’t deny His beast anything that it could have without hurting itself or others! (Luke 7:34) 9 …but neither did His “tender mercies” let it push Him around. Jesus’ beast wanted its own way, just like yours does. But Jesus rode His beast, and never let His beast ride Him. This may be one reason He rode into Jerusalem on a donkey (Matthew 21:5), the most stubborn beast there is!
Jesus proved that your beast can be “ridden” perfectly, and trained so well that it needs no bit nor reins; simply the touch of our higher nature should be enough to make our beast obey. So get your beast in the habit of obeying your soul – and in the habit of trusting you to take care of it. And after the hot water, do cold again. It’s a lot easier the second time. And when you master it, when it becomes too easy, too boring, do something else, find a new challenge – until your beast always responds without hesitation to the lightest touch.
In time, once it is trained, you can ride without a bit – even without reins, where merely a touch of the heel or a finger on the neck will turn the horse. That is the relationship you must build with your own carnal nature. Once you’ve done that, you’ll have taught your beast to look past its own suffering and obey your commands regardless of how it feels. But many, many philosophers have done this – it’s the cornerstone of most philosophies from Plato and Epictetus to Ghandi and Thoreau.
But is that what religion is all about? Colossians 2:23. To most ascetic and stoic philosophers, denying the body was an end in itself; avoiding pleasure was, itself, a noble goal. And while that sounds nice, it simply isn’t true. This is that “vain philosophy” (Colossians 2:8), which was extremely popular in the time of Paul. You’re not denying your body because it’s inherently good to deny the body; you’re denying the body to teach your beast to obey you. Once it does, then there is no reason not to give it whatever will bring it/you happiness provided it is good for everyone concerned. And provided it doesn’t ever get too spoiled again.
NEVER LET IT WIN, NO MATTER WHAT
Once I had some cows in a pasture; I’d raised them there since they were only a few months old. The fences weren’t perfect, but they had never gotten out so I never saw a need to make them better. Then I let the neighbor babysit them at his farm for a few months. He had terrible fences, and they learned that the idea of a fence wasn’t absolute. That fences could be pushed, and you could get the grass on the other side. They learned how to do that because his fences, his laws, were negotiable.
Naturally, when they came back to my place they hadn’t been there a day before they pushed out the fence; again I fixed it, again they found a way out. My fence had once been a law so absolute it never occurred to them to question it; but one trip to the neighbor’s and they learned that the true law was whatever they could get away with. Your beast learned long ago that it could push you around and make you do what it wants. If you fast and take cold showers and deny yourself, if you’re consistent, you can reclaim your role as lord of the body.
But every time you let the beast push out of a fence, not only will you have to chase it all over the field trying to get it back where it belongs, but it will try that much harder next time knowing there’s a good chance it can win if it just argues hard enough and long enough! So as you’re denying your beast, pushing the limits of your comfort zone, doing things that your soul knows are good but which frighten, tire, or frustrate the beast, remember: every step the beast makes you hesitate is a win for the beast.
It doesn’t matter if you eventually do dive off the cliff; if it made you hesitate and reposition, pause and build up your courage again five times… even if you do eventually dive, that’s not a win for you! That scorecard reads 5 for the beast, and only 1 for you! Every time you let it hesitate was a win for the beast, teaching it that your soul is weak and can be pushed around, and that your rules should be treated as guidelines, at best. And what does that mean? 2 Peter 2:19.
BONDAGE
What does God compare people to, who are brought in bondage like this? 2 Peter 2:22. Beasts! What did Jesus promise us? John 8:32. The entire world is in bondage. Not to sin, an abstract concept. Not to the devil, an invisible ruler of darkness. Not to the beast, a corporate system of world government. Well, to all of these things, but really, to none of them; for the first allegiance of every man is to his own life – to preserving his own body (Job 2:4). And that means that anyone who is ruled by that fear of death, which is by definition a fear of the beast, is in bondage to it (Hebrews 2:15).
The bondage Jesus came to free us from is not bondage to some worldly government; sure, He did that too (John 8:33-34), but that was a trivial benefit compared to the freedom He offers us from our greatest oppressor: our own heart. The world is terrified of the coming beast empire enslaving them. And yet they are already slaves to their beast. Because the ultimate enslaver is not some tyrant in the Vatican or Jerusalem, it’s the tyrant in your own limbic system. I told you in Lesson 3-19 that going to church wasn’t even remotely helpful to make you more like God, and this is why. Because all they can teach you in a few hours a week are facts, at best. And even if those are the true facts, the true doctrines, they can’t save you.
Because becoming a child of God is not about knowing a few facts about God. Facts about God are meaningless if your beast is your master; for no matter what you know about God, you can’t serve God as long as you are a slave to your own heart! Matthew 6:24. And that is why this lesson, and the ones coming up, are by far the most important ones in this course so far. Because the truth – this truth – is the only way for you to be set free (John 8:31-36).
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
Some time ago I went on a horseback ride with a few friends. Five of us had five horses, and the riders’ attitudes were as varied as the animals’. Two horses were simply lazy – they had learned that if they just played passive-aggressive and plodded along as slowly as possible, they could get away without really earning their feed. Another one was lazy, but also grumpy – he liked to bite whenever you tried to make him walk faster. Another one was actually fairly well-balanced – it walked fast, and gave us few problems. The last one – mine – was “crazy” according to the owners. He wouldn’t stop. He wouldn’t walk. He wanted to trot the whole time. He tossed his head every time I suggested we go one way or another.
When we came to a fork in the road he ALWAYS had a strong opinion about which road to go down – even though he had no idea where we were going. It was a big fight to get him to go the direction I had chosen, every time. So I had to remind him that I was riding HIM, not the other way around. When he made things difficult for me, I would make things difficult for him, such as making him walk in a tight circle by pulling on the bit until he forgot about what he was thinking of doing. Then, once he acquiesced I would show him some small encouragement, like a rub on the neck. Within 20 minutes we had established that I was the rider and he was the horse, and from then on he was the best horse in the group.
The other riders were like “how did you get your horse to behave?” and I told them that I established boundaries, rules, and each time he broke them I enforced them – fairly, but sternly and most importantly of all – CONSISTENTLY. You can’t let your horse gallop around and do what he wants for ten minutes, then expect him to listen to you the next ten; you can’t beat him for being lazy one minute, then ignore the exact same laziness next time. To train any creature, whether a horse, a child, a dog, or your own nature, the most important thing of all is to be the same person, with the same expectations “yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8).
The other riders never got their mounts to obey them, because they were not worthy of obedience. Some were too weak to be stern to the horse; some were too inconsistent, and confused the horse; and some were simply too overcome by laziness in their own internal beast to be bothered to rule the laziness of another beast – so they simply complained. So I spent a few minutes riding and working with each horse, then returned it to the rider; and the horses were now willing to obey that person, because they realized that if they didn’t, I would come back and demand to know why. So in a sense, a chain of command was established in the horse’s mind.
There was nothing wrong with any of these horses. They had simply been allowed to indulge their selfishness too much and needed to be reminded that we were riding them, not the other way around. In precisely the same way, there is nothing wrong with YOUR beast – it has simply been allowed to run wild far too long. Much as a good horse and a skilled rider become like one creature (the origin of the centaur legend), so you and your own carnal nature are one creature. But like my friends on their horses, if you are not in charge of your beast, there will be a “war in your members”, between your mind – which follows the law of the spirit – and your flesh, which follows the law of “me-me-me” (Romans 7:14-18).
Naturally, this constant battle between your poorly-mastered beast makes you frustrated, and exhausts you both. It also makes you and your beast wander back and forth all over the road, as you’ll see if you ever watch a baboon-like tourist ride a poorly-mastered horse. So because you have spoiled your beast for a lifetime, he has developed bad habits. It’s harder now to get him to obey you with respect because you have taught him that he doesn’t have to! You’ve taught him that when you say “just one more piece of cake”, he only has to start whining before you give in and let him eat another, and another, each time agreeing to “just one more”.
And because you’ve been such a spineless rider his whole life, every time you give a command, he tosses his head because he knows you’ll let him. So you must now treat your beast as Paul taught the church: 2 Timothy 4:2 Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. You needn’t be cruel; although your beast, precisely like a spoiled child, will throw a fit at the slightest demand from you, and scream that you’re killing it, and that it hates you – but you must be stern, consistent, and, of course, righteous.
That reminds me… I need some cake. No, seriously, I need it. It has lemon frosting, so it’s got like, Vitamin C, so it’s good for me! Is that my soul talking? Judge yourself the same way you just judged me.