30 Apr So You’ve Embraced an Eternal Perspective… Are You Maintaining It?
Embracing an eternal perspective and maintaining it are two different things.
In fact, embracing an eternal perspective is the easy part. Maintaining it is the hard part.
To embrace an eternal perspective, we accept – by faith – that we must assess temporal circumstances in light of eternal truth. Most Christians, when confronted with that reality, see the wisdom of it and accept it as the right decision.
We read 2 Corinthians 5:7, which says, “we walk by faith and not by sight,” and say in our hearts, “Right on!” It is a first and essential step.
The hitch is, as we saw in an earlier post, there is a continual gravitational pull of the world to live by what we see, rather than by what we, in our inner man, believe to be true. All that the world ever teaches us, by example, is how to live with a temporal perspective. A popular commercial says, “I want it all, and I want it now!” Couldn’t be any more concise!
Un-resisted temporal reality wears us down and fogs our minds into slipping back into a temporal perspective, even though when we stop to think about it, we still embrace the wisdom of an eternal perspective.
We must expand our thinking to maintain an eternal perspective
Years ago, when I was in seminary, I was an instructor at a clinic that provided remediation therapy for children with learning disabilities. One of the things we helped the children do was to lengthen their typically short attention spans.
We put students in a classroom where we gave them instructions on how to complete straightforward exercises in a workbook. We told them to be sure not to bother their neighbors, and to continue working to complete the chapter in the time required.
We told them that we would be in an adjoining room behind a two-way mirror watching them. We explained that if they quit working, or if they started bothering their neighbor, we would come into the room and help them refocus.
So, we made it clear that we would be watching them though they wouldn’t be able to see us. And we made it clear that if they didn’t follow instructions, we would come into the room and help them refocus.
In spite of all of that, the students typically would not be able to maintain their concentration and follow through on their instructions.
They would frequently either stop working and just start goofing around at their desk, or they would start bothering their neighbor. They would sometimes come over to the mirror and try to peer through the mirror into the room behind it – apparently not convinced that there was anyone there.
So, we would come back into their room and refocus them. They would typically lose concentration again after a while, so we would to it again. And again. But over time, with reinforcement, many of them experienced significant increases in their attention span.
I’ve often thought how like the Christian life that was. The Bible tells us that, even though we cannot see God, He can see us. But because we cannot see him, and because the constant feedback from the world around us lulls us into thinking He is not there, it is common for Christians to live and act as though God didn’t exist, or if He exists, He’s not watching at the moment and/or that it doesn’t matter.
We must reinforce our thinking to maintain an eternal perspective
Neil Postman has written a compelling book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, regarding the negative impact of television on modern life. After detailing how television tends to divorce our minds from reality, he then helpfully states that the first step in breaking the hold of television on us is realizing that it has a hold on us.
The same often seems to be true of a temporal perspective. Realizing that a temporal perspective has a hold on us seems to be an important first step in breaking the hold of a temporal perspective.
An important second step in breaking the hold of a temporal perspective is to reinforce eternal truth, over and over again, nurturing it as a more vibrant reality than a temporal perspective.
Psalm 1:1-3 says, “How blessed is the man who does not walk in the way of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night. And he will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither, and in whatever he does, he prospers.
This teaches us the wisdom of memorizing and meditating on Scripture, which, by default nurtures an eternal perspective, enabling us not to walk in the way of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers.
In the blog post two weeks ago, I listed two central passages on an eternal perspective: 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 and Colossians 3:1-4. Sending those two passages through our brains regularly (by memorizing and meditating on them) can be a valuable asset in nurturing an eternal perspective.
As we become more aware of the subtle influence of culture on us, and as we choose not to carelessly feed our minds temporal values, but to carefully feed our minds eternal values, we can effectively maintain an eternal perspective.
Conclusion
Each one of us is to experience our own spiritual Copernican revolution. Copernicus was an astronomer who lived in the 15th and 16th centuries in Poland. Until his time, scientists believed that the sun revolved around the earth. Copernicus concluded from his observations that the earth revolved around the sun. Time proved him right. The earth was not the center of the solar system. The sun was.
In our spiritual Copernican revolution, we come to grips with the fact that, contrary to a temporal perspective, we are not the center of our universe – God is.
When we put ourselves at the center of our universe and expect God to revolve around us, it results in confusion, discouragement, and frustration with God’s refusal to bless our lives as we think he should.
When we put God at the center of our universe and revolve around him, we perceive reality accurately and can then line up with it. In this context, that means taking the necessary steps not merely to embrace, but also to maintain, an eternal perspective.
For some time now, I have used a personal worship system to help me maintain my eternal perspective in today’s media-saturated world. It has been life changing. I am working on making this system available online for others as soon as possible. If you would like to learn more about this spiritual growth strategy and resource, you can read about it here, and sign up for The Change Zone Waitlist so you’ll know when it’s available for your own personal worship time, to help reinforce an eternal perspective and accelerate your spiritual transformation.
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