How to Keep From Getting Tricked by Life

05 Mar How to Keep From Getting Tricked by Life

The story is told of when, in the early days of the space program, NASA outfitted astronauts with training goggles that had special lenses that turned their vision upside down. As they pushed the boundaries of human limitations for the sake of the space program, the scientists wanted to see how the body would react to such an extreme alteration in visual perception.

This, of course, presented profound challenges to the astronauts in performing even the most basic functions of life. Every movement appeared opposite of reality; up was down and right was left, causing them to have to think through each action before moving, rather than just react instinctively based on what they saw.

They had to go into an inner world to translate what they saw, converting it from what appeared to be true to what actually was true, before taking action.¹

To me, this is a powerful parable of living life with an eternal perspective.  Much in the Bible is upside down and backward from how we naturally see things. And, an eternal perspective can help keep us from getting tricked by life.

But living life with an eternal perspective is both a decision and a process. To live life with an eternal perspective, we must first make a commitment to do so.

#1: We must embrace an eternal perspective

The world says that…

• To be saved, we must save ourselves,
• To be great, we must advance ourselves,
• To be first, we must push to the head of the line,
• To receive, we must take,
• To seem pure, we must hide our faults.

Yet the Bible clearly reverses all that…

• To find your life you must lose it (Matthew 16:25),
• To be great you must be a servant (Mark 10:43-45),
• To be first you must become last (Matthew 20:16),
• To receive you must give (Luke 6:38),
• To be pure you must confess your wrongdoing. (1 John 1:9)

 So, as we live our everyday lives, instead of acting naturally, instinctively, Christians must do the same as the astronauts… go into an inner world to translate what we see, converting it from what appears to be true to what actually is true, so we can make the right decisions. 

For example, though our natural first impulse is to save our life, we go into our inner world first, rehearse Scripture, tell ourselves the truth… that to find our life we must lose it in Christ… and act according to that inner truth rather than external impulse.

This is part of what it means to have an eternal perspective… to look at the world as God does, as Scripture reveals it, rather than to look at the world as natural humanity does.  Then, we must often do the opposite of what we see.

Until we have an eternal perspective, we are looking at the world upside down (though, like the astronauts, it seems right side up). 

So, step number one in not getting tricked by life is realizing that we, by nature, look at the world upside down (though it seems right side up).  We must embrace reality: choose to accept God’s perspective on reality, go into our inner world and translate what falsely appears to be true into what actually is true, and act accordingly.

But, we can’t stop there. 

#2: We must maintain an eternal perspective

It is one thing to embrace an eternal perspective.  It is another to maintain it.

The world is constantly telling us lies, constantly deceiving us, constantly luring us back to our old way of seeing things.  So, we must be diligent to repeat the truth until it changes us. 

In seminary, I was an instructor in a clinic that provided remediation therapy for children with perceptual dysfunction.  Many of these children had very short attention spans, so we had exercises to increase their attention spans. 

We put them in a classroom and gave them “reading exercises” that they were to do.  Then, we told them that we would be behind a two-way mirror watching them, so, they needed to keep working and not bother their neighbors. 

When we went to the adjoining room behind the two-way mirror, the students would do their reading exercises for a while.  But those who were in the early stages of development would typically get distracted very quickly and start goofing off or bothering their neighbors. 

In more than one instance, they would come over the to mirror and look into the mirror to see if they could see anyone “back there.” 

We would come back into the room, refocus them, and then return to the “secret mirror room.”  And, again, they would lose their focus, get distracted, and start acting as though we were not behind the mirror.  So again, we would come back into the room and refocus them. As we did this over a period of time, we typically saw very encouraging increases in attention span.

I have often thought about how like that we are with an eternal perspective.  We do pretty well living by eternal truth when we are in church on Sunday, but on Monday morning, we begin to lose our focus. We get distracted, losing our focus on the truths of God and begin acting as though God didn’t exist, that He wasn’t “behind the mirror”. 

So after choosing, by faith, to look at the world as God does, we must then maintain that perspective, since the world is always luring us to revert to a secular perspective.

Key passages

An effective way to cultivate (embrace and maintain) an eternal perspective is to memorize and regularly meditate on “eternal perspective” Scripture passages. Repetition is the key to mental ownership, so if something is important, we must repeat it until it changes us.

Three powerful passages for cultivating an eternal perspective are:

• Romans 8:18
• 2 Corinthians 4:16-18
• Colossians 3:1-4

Find a translation you are comfortable with.  Then, to start out, don’t try to memorize them. Just read them once every day. After a while, a month or two, you may then be able to memorize them deeply with just a little touch up work. Then, you can meditate on them whenever you choose – going to sleep that night, waking up or getting ready for the day in the morning, driving to work, etc.

Conclusion

As we embrace an eternal perspective (which is a decision) and then maintain it (which is a process), we can function according to what is actually true, rather than what falsely appears to be true… aligning ourselves with God’s will and character, and reaping the happy results of love, joy and peace (Galatians 5:22-23). 

¹While this story is found in many sites on the internet, I have not been able to verify if the story about the astronauts is actually true. However, a number of other experiments not involving astronauts have been done to explore “reversible inverted vision.”  Different studies have varying results, and not being a scientist, I use the idea as a helpful parable.   http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/mar97/858984531.Ns.r.html

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