Orientation
We call it worldview. We call it perspective. Some call it our “map”. Whatever word we give it, we all have a way of understanding - or orienting - ourselves to what’s happening around us and in us. Our orientation dictates our response.
Simplistically speaking, it seems as though three broad categories of orientation exist. Self, other and spiritual. We see the world through the lense of serving self. We see the world through the lense of serving others. Or, we see the world through the lense of serving something or someone greater than ourselves.
The particular lense through which we see dictates our response to our life experience. This is how two different people with opposing responses to the same experience can both feel firmly justified in their chosen response. It would do us good to remember not everyone sees the world as we do before we begin judging and hating.
To delve into deeper complexity, we could possibly reduce the types of orientation to two. We could say we are oriented to either self or to something greater than ourselves. To say so requires satisfying the very real driving force of serving others. We can do so by arguing when we serve others we are motivated by the reward of serving ourselves or of serving something greater than ourselves. Let’s be honest. Serving others feels good, especially when we believe it makes us look good. Even if it doesn’t make us “look good” according to the current cultural narrative, if it fits into our understanding of the story we are in, it is serving the way we see the world. Whether we see the world through self or some higher power determines what we believe is the most important agent for molding, shaping and ruling our reality.
To go further, we could say we are oriented to self or Jesus. How can we make such a leap - from something greater than ourselves to the historically proven, yet highly controversial person of Jesus? Why not say the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? The God of the Bible. The God of the Jews and of the Muslims? God as with other gods, beings, values and beliefs many people throughout the world choose to serve that are greater than ourselves, provides for us a framework of behavior to follow. When followed, we are the beneficiaries of the reward we have earned. We have essentially served ourselves to obtain whatever reward our understanding of the world leads us - and others - to receive. So, serving something greater than ourselves ultimately serves self.
But Jesus. God sent him to us after setting the stage for us to show us we cannot both serve self and win if the ultimate outcome of our response to what’s happening in our life experience is to preserve our lives. The entire Old Testament displays our inability to follow God’s law. The law leads us to our need for a savior bigger than ourselves. And Jesus gave his life for us, demanding no behavioral fulfillment because we are incapable of perfectly fulfilling any behavioral standard. Jesus lets us know doing a thing is the same as thinking it. Our behaviors are defined by what’s in our hearts and minds, in addition to the actions of our hands and feet. None of us are innocent. Keeping our hearts and minds hidden from others is one thing, keeping it hidden from God, that’s impossible. He knows. And that’s why he gave Jesus up for us. We then get to choose whatever orientation we want. We decide to serve self or to serve Jesus.
Serving Jesus means dying to self and living with this loss for the promise of life beyond our current reality. Serving self means battling to preserve it here, because that’s all there is.
“For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.
2 Peter 1: 20 -24
““I [Jesus] tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him! Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows.
“And I [Jesus] tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God, but the one who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God.”
Luke 12:4 - 9
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