Divine DNA! Doctrinal DNA! The LOVE Contract of Isa53:10-12

If you've come to love learning the Word, then this section is for you. And you probably love the Word, if you have read the 1st Aspect. Therefore, you have a strong desire to reciprocate God. Therefore, you are dangerous to yourself, and to everyone else.

Christianity's sordid history is largely one of a desire to reciprocate, run amok. Satan&Co. fawn that. It's natural to taste the Grace of God and then want to 'do' something in return, for Him. We are that way with other people, so we are that way in our thinking of God, too. But God is not people, and what works to reciprocate Him, is to do nothing. Christ knew that. Christ did that -- nothing. To do nothing goes entirely against human nature. Because, we being finite, need constant to-and-fro. For finity depends on barriers.. and on movement. But God's Nature is the very opposite of all that.

True love needs no reciprocation nor wants any, 1Cor13. True Love Gives (ibid), and Never Wants To Stop Giving. As explained in the "Introduction to Love" link (@pagetop), and in the "Integrity Properties" link of LordvSatan1.htm, God's Love is Absolute. [See also DueDisclosure.htm, the first blocks of purple text, so to see why Trinity is first a Corporation of Three Voluntarily-Uniting, Co-Equal, Same-Infinite-Nature Gods.] So True Love never seeks reciprocation, ibid.

Which creates the great dilemma: if as the Lord said, "it is better to give than to receive", and True Love is built in you, you will have a desire to GIVE which you cannot ever competently execute. Hence you will be tortured, to grow in the spiritual life; not because it is torturous, but because there is No Outlet. Your love for God grows, and your ability to enact that love, is increasingly understood as being inadequate. So the solution IS to do nothing. God will do the reciprocation FOR you. You just keep on being carried by the Spirit, and learning and living on the Word: which is what Christ did. So the Cross for Him, was the greatest relief of His Life. United His Thinking fully with Father, and paid for us. "Combat" table of LvS4d.htm goes into more detail on that. So we get HIS spiritual life, as noted in the First Aspect, so to learn how to get the oneness He prayed for in John 17 -- which means abiding in Him, theme of 1Jn. Which means a whole lot of waiting occurs. Which builds up a yearning for a cross.. just as it did, in Him.

Hence, among humans, basically one of two ways of reciprocating God, is chosen: 1) to religify, or 2) to study.

To say "religify" means anything but really learning God and what He wants in His Book, even if thinking one knows that book. Key symptom will be an urge to criticise. "Pil-pul" in Judaism is essentially an urge to religify, where you endlessly fine-tune what you think 'obedience' is, to the law. It's Pharisaical. But anyone does the same thing: if you don't get that emotional high when thinking of God, are you bad? If you didn't light candles -- ALL of them -- are you bad? If you showed up at Mass five minutes late, are you damned to hell? All of these incredibly stupid questions demonstrate man's total inability to reciprocate God. So of course, we apply these unending, torturous standards to each other, and every little 'infraction' brings down our houses of cards: relationships shatter, people sue each other, even kill each other. All in the name of 'honor', of course! All the while, honoring no one but Satan&Co.

Hence 1) people don't love learning the Word, even if they fancy themselves learning it; instead, they love the world as their god (theme in 1Jn and John 14-17, Phili 3:18-19, 2Tim2:26-3:7). Hence, they mistake the temptations of Matt4, as being 'spiritual'. You can prove this in five seconds: just turn on your TV to any 'Christian' station. Hence all the crusaderism, flashy Bible thumping, politicking amidst Christians today. All Rev17 harlotry, playing on your TV, any hour of the day.

All of us, when we are young in the spiritual life, make this mistake. For human love is rather robotic in its analysis, keeping a scorecard of do's: did I get/give a card for a birthday, did I get/give a phone call, did I get/give a nice enough gift, did I get/show enough respect, etc. ad nauseam. Those are manners, not true love. We don't know what true love is, so we follow signposts someone else (Satan&Co. or society) put up as the manifestations of love. But true love is in the thinking, not the behavior. So if Satan&Co. can keep us busy enough with the behaviors, and long enough, they can stunt our spiritual lives; we end up chasing our own sense of self-worth, trying to be 'worthy' (and often deeming ourselves 'worthy', since the obvious not-worthy answer is too painful). Which they love, to see!

It's a subtle and devastating descent into a torturous life of self-absorption. Say you really love someone. You will become anal about it. So you will constantly be having comparative thoughts, which spiral down further and further in to your own worthiness. So if you don't do what you think you should, either you will fantasize yourself as not loving enough, or fantasize the love-object, as not deserving -- anything to assuage the pain which comes from this needless, anal, comparative thinking which plagues every member of the human race. When laws multiply in a nation, the nation is wholly afflicted with this anal preoccupation, as in the US today. So it has long since ceased to be even human love, but is obsession and hatred, fawned and thus fanned into self-burning, by the happy sponsors: Satan&Co.

Love fulfills the Law. That's a threaded theme in OT and NT, to show how if no love, then no law can fulfill love's role, and instead will rot those involved in all that law-living, like maggots rotted the too-much-manna gathered by Israel in the wilderness. It never works vice versa: love fulfills law, but never law fulfills love. So the "law of Christ", IS love, another threaded theme in the NT. For if you have everything else but no love, then you have and are nothing, Paul wittily remarks in 1Cor13; for Love must be and can only be, Free, Isa53-55. Here's why: True love can never be based on obligation, no matter how much the recipient deserves it. As you will see below, God went out of his way to ban all deservingnesses (and hence human works are always evil): true love in God is never ever based on deserving, because it is Absolute.

Because Love is ABSOLUTE, man can't 'do' it. God, however, can "pour" His Word into us, and we can be CARRIED by the Holy Spirit, IN that Absolute Love. And then we ARE 'doing' it, as 1Jn and John 14-17, incessantly repeat. (Romans 5-8 is on how this process works at the big-picture level of your life, and Ephesians knits the whole macro history picture together, demonstrating how God's Purpose for Giving us His Love from eternity past, is completed.) The First Aspect covered that process, and this Second Aspect is on the many pitfalls in the human race's pursuit of this Absolute Love: particularly, the believer going through the DDNA process.

So, look: Adam went nutso in the Garden, and the first thing he did, was a 'work': "Operation Figleaves", as my pastor likes to call it. Which did for God, nothing at all. Which did for Adam, nothing at all except to make him more nutso. So we Christians, who lost our brains altogether that first nanosecond we believed in Christ, go Absolutely Nutso when we have any taste of grace which 'registers' in our brainouts. We don't know what to do with it. We therefore devise the most sickening ways to reciprocate it, due to demonic aid: God provides, man wrecks, Satan&Co. 'help'. Especially, here. Thus we go shuffling off with the bellringers, imagining ourselves doing great things for God.

So we all start out in 1), not knowing better; even if we learn early that STUDY is the only way to grow spiritually, we will RELIGIFY that 'rule'. I've seen it happen in my own church, and of course in the early stages it happened to me as well. It's normal and natural, this trap. What's ABnormal, is to remain so disinterested in God you don't grow out of the trap. For you can't persist in religification unless you are uninterested in God. True interest will eventually free you from this false-love, fawning religification which passes for 'worship' in all religions, since time began. For Satan invented religion, in Gen3 (really, his own initial motive for rebellion against God was messianic and religious, Isa14&Eze28).

So here we are, helpless children caught in this superhuman battle between God who Absolutely Loves us, and Satan&Co. who 'absolutely' hate Him. Added to that problem is the fact that we remain childish in our concepts of love, since the only way we can grow UP, is to get enough DDNA built into us. Else, love is a torture chamber. Which is why, from time immemorial, we've fancied love as something you feel, we crave it and endlessly abuse ourselves and others in the name of it. That's the history of the human race, and of the "People of the Book", in particular. ["People of the Book" is a Koranic catchphrase, Satan&Co.'s wry tribute to the Bible. That's why there IS a Koran, to trap some of Abraham's sons who did not inherit the Land, into being jealous over those who also won't inherit the Land, since none of them are really learning the Book. Christians, Jews, and Arabs, in other words, with "the Land" being an eternal life with God, according to whatever 'covenant' period one was in. So: notice carefully how we've all warred with each other, from time immemorial. Because, Satan hates love, and is out to destroy anyone who is an object of God's love. Even, himself: he is so tortured, he baits the Lord to destroy him, in the 3rd Temptation. More on that is in SatStrat.htm, the "Matt4" intra-page link at its pagetop.]

As we all know, a child has to grow up. What makes any child grow up, is a development of interest outside of himself. Question is, in what ways? If you develop an interest in science, and it persists, then you will give more and more of your time to it, not at all considering it a work. You will religify that pursuit, because you are so interested; but, after awhile, you will realize you've religified it -- again, because you are interested IN IT, more than you are interested in being 'good' at it. Notice that subtle change:

• you have an interest, you grow in it, and sooner or later there's this 'goodness' you become, due to that interest.
• Then that 'goodness' will 'compete' with the object itself: here, science (in the spiritual life, God).
• So what happens next?
• If you fall for the 'goodness' which you've become, you will lose interest in the object, since it is now serving your 'goodness'.
• If instead you increase your interest in the science, then you will forget about how 'good' you are: because, the object is not how good you are, but your love-interest (here science, but in the spiritual life, it's God).

And so it is, in the spiritual life with God. So God's goal is to progress you beyond the child's interest, to an all-consuming one, where it ceases to matter how good you are. For that is freedom: for if life were based on deservings, we'd all be torturing ourselves and others over those deservings. God is not the God of torture. Even when He tortured Christ for our sins and tells us about that fact, His Message is I Love you Absolutely, and absolutely not, 'you owe me.' For True Love, has no limits, and therefore no 'strings'. Which is, the very opposite of human love. Absolutely.

The complication here: This Is True Goodness, God's Thinking Building In You. Unlike the other ideas of love and goodness, God's Real Thinking IS that good. So your thinking becomes truly good, as you learn. But notice how the problem of your 'goodness' still and even more competes with "God" -- precisely because your thinking has become so good, and you know it is good. Which competition, you won't notice, since the realization that you've become good in thinking, taps your anal desire to Reciprocate God, which you still cannot do -- but will fancy, you can.

Satan knows this 2) problem well, since it was his own: he was the smartest of God's creatures, and from what I can tell from my pastor's many classes on Satanology and from Scripture, Satan was designed to be the #1 over all creation, second after only the Son. Satan didn't pass this #2) problem, and instead got very religious about it, finally concluding that God was using him. So, eons later, in Matt4, he tries to motivate the Lord's Humanity to tip His Love for Father and us, over into adikia, "wrongdoing" (my pastor's translation of the term, in 1Jn1:9 and Col3:25). And the way the tip-over works, is to get you to overeat the Word in terms of study. Precisely because you do love it.

See, True Love for God comes from all that DDNA; and its character, being Divine, means its God's Own Attribute of Love being built in you. And this love, couldn't BE more alien to the human nature. The human nature is first finite, and second, sin-nature tainted. Finity can never 'carry' Infinity. Sin can't 'carry' love. Paul makes that impossibility clear, in Romans 8. Hence the need to be Filled by the Spirit, so you can be CARRIED, even as Christ Himself, Who Knew No Sin, was 'carried' by the Spirit all the way through the Cross (Romans 6, Isa53:10-12, 2Cor5:21). Also, God's Love is the opposite of human love. Why? Because first, Infinity is exactly the opposite of finity: for Infinity, has no barriers, but finity depends on barriers. Second, because Perfection is exactly the opposite of sin. Perfection, is a wholeness, but sin is a complete fragmentation, a shattering like the proverbial Humpty Dumpty who had a great fall. No one can put you together again, because everyone else is just like you. That is, everyone except the Son of God who Added Humanity to Himself so His Thinking can transform your soul (Rom12:2+Rom5:5, Greek text in context).

For God's Love has no beginning, so is always 'on', as we saw in the "Introduction to Love" section (top of page). Since it has no beginning, nothing 'motivates' it, as my pastor likes to remind us (stridently, too). God's Love requires no object, therefore. God's Love is Absolute, meaning no limits, ever. Nothing dents it. Nothing sways it. Nothing knocks it down. Moreover, unlike human love, God's Love doesn't require any love object to be 'good' -- precisely because His Love is Absolute. As noted in the "Introduction to Love" link, any truth (i.e., the truth that something is bad), is ipse reason to love it. Paul waxes rhapsodic at the end of Romans 5, noting how God turned our sins into advantage for Himself, loving for grace to abound the more. No wonder he begins Romans 6 as he does: what, shall we keep sinning, so that grace may continue?

No human can think this way. Proof positive: we argue endlessly about one another's sins, filling up bars and coffee shops with our tales of woe and anger; we ascribe to the Bible, the same kind of farcical attitudes: when the Bible makes it clear that our sins were wiped off the map! at the Cross. That's why there was one! So, see: God looks at how marvelously He solved the sin problem, and luxuriates in its results (i.e., Heb12:2 shows the attitude of Christ ON the Cross, and Isa53:10-12 shows how it's part of a larger contract for the sake of Son); so Love is judicially free to do what it wants! But man keeps on setting up barriers. No one but goes to hell for rejecting the Love of God, Romans 5:8, John 3:36.

So for a human to get this Absolute Love in him, whoa: should drive the person, nutso! Above all, the reason you MUST be carried by the Holy Spirit in God's System, is that your own 'system', your own beingness, cannot handle this Love, which is Undivided from Truth, hence every 'dot' of DDNA you get, is FULL of this alien Love! Truth is alien to man, love is alien to man. We live by our urges, and the 'urge' which comes from DDNA, is opposite our natures in every way: see Romans 7-8, especially in the Greek.

So you will easily be tipped over the edge. And for the best of reasons: you want to do something to thank God, You Need An Outlet For Your Own Love! This, above all, was the greatest Temptation Christ faced, every second He breathed down here. Satan of course knew that. So was trying to get Christ to 'step out' of the Spirit, so to speak, in the very name of doing something on His Own to Make A Gift. A temptation to a good deed. Note that: a good deed, not a God-deed. The extra "o" in "good", means opposition!

So for those of us who are happily 'afflicted' with so much DDNA, we just can't get enough. And we know it's God's Will to learn His Son, so we naturally figure that the more Doctrine we eat, the better. So watch how easy the tip: then eat more and more and if you eat anything else (i.e., have other activities and interests besides eating Doctrine) then are you pleasing Father? Ohhhh, how subtle the tip-over. One simple pronoun, "you" -- got inserted, thus obfuscating God Himself. So now "good", opposes God. What YOU do. Wrong pronoun! So in comes guilt, in comes frustration, in comes denigration of anything else BUT eating Doctrine. At which point, YOUR DOING it is the god, and no longer, God Himself. Whoa: subtle and sudden descent into adikia, baby.

Like the Lord told the Pharisees, "God made the Sabbath for man, not man for the Sabbath." Doctrine IS Sabbath, the promise, the 7th day, the REST, during which Israel was supposed to REST so she could STUDY the WORD all the day, not having to wait until evening only. Man doesn't live on Bread Alone, but on every word that proceeds from the Mouth of God (Matt4:4) -- but man doesn't gorge himself on the Word, either. Kinda like the Judaic obsession over when sundown begins, so that they spend countless Mishnaic sentences on what kind of blue versus white thread, the believer obsessing over eating Doctrine, religifies its study. At which point, God is no longer the god of his mind. And he won't even KNOW that happened! [Big and stupid megillah made over when sundown begins in Jewish law: when you can't distinguish between blue and white thread, then you light the Sabbath candles. You won't find that rule anywhere in Scripture. Idiots who want to pride themselves (or, more innocently, get it right just for the thrill of it), made up this rule. But notice how now what THEY DO is the god, no longer the God who MADE the Sabbath. So how much Word will they understand? None. This is the curse in Judaism today. Words mouthed, but never understood: see Deut 30:11ff. Christianity is no different.]

It is true that the goal of the spiritual life is for you to become full of Word CYCLING in your head, 24/7. Trick is, for VARIETY and BALANCE to also be your life. Thinking in two universes at the same time, basically -- toward God (Father), and toward your life. The second 'look' gets gradually more and more coalesced to the First One, so that you come to see everything in terms of Christ. But that means Practice of Word as well as study. Trouble is, for the 2) person, the study has become so wonderful, he's loathe to spend his time on anything else. And there IS no comparison, because compared to Word, everything else in life is boring. So then practice takes a sad holiday, and the believer's life, well.. gets imbalanced. Which is precisely what Satan&Co. most hope for, since it's only the 2) people, who are a threat to them.

The 2) people are a threat, because this Absolute Love which is DDNA, makes the 2) person, WEAKER. See, Satan&Co. consider love a weakness in God. Therefore, hatred is strength. To be defeated by some mere human who loves God, is thus the greatest insult to them. So they ridicule the Love of God everywhere: the phallic cults of OT times (and even now) are really demonic ridicule of God's Love Plan. Satan is ascetic. That's a hatred base. I have accomplished so much. I am so good. Everyone should therefore grovel to me. The ascetic thinks that way also, but usually views himself as an object who should be doing the grovelling. God is not like this. God DOESN'T want grovelling. God wants you to be EQUAL to Him, so He can SHARE His Love Fully with you. So the 2) people, thus weakened by all that DDNA so they truly see they cannot reciprocate, can only impotently desire it. Which, the Holy Spirit then picks up and carries into competence, even as He picked up our nonmeritorious faith in Christ and made it into permanent salvation, that first second we believed Christ paid for all our sins.

So as you grow in the Christian life, you will see more how Awesomely Infinite God is; so you will be tempted to despair of ever doing anything even remotely reciprocating for Him. You'll go through a cocky phase where you imagine doing great things for God; and after being spanked enough, will jettison that religiosity, in favor of being CARRIED by God. At which point, God gets reciprocation, because YOU want Him to get it. By the Holy Spirit's doing, more DDNA will be built into you, and THAT is what God wants as 'reciprocation'. Because, He just Flat Loves. So uses your own desire to make you better, so you won't feel bad about it anymore. You need the outlet, and He gives it to you: "We love, because He first loved us", 1Jn4:19.

In sum, the problem of Love, is love itself. God being Absolute and we being finite, there is this fundamental MISMATCH between His Nature, and ours. We are the ones with the problem. Now: should God then have made automatons, or perfectly-chirpy Stepford wives? How would that EVER please, True love? But then if He will be DEPOSITING His Love into us, well.. it's a torturous procedure, to grow up in that Love. Which torture, is kinda inherent, for love WANTS TO GIVE, but at the same time, wants NO reciprocation. The only 'reciprocation' True Love wants, is to be able to express ITSELF. So, knowing this, God Wants To Deposit His Truth In Us, since that will give us the strength (if He keeps running it, and NOT us) to have both this Love IN us, and yet not be tortured by it. For once we have enough of this Love in us, we will Love Being Carried By Him, and any 'cross' is a relief, never a torture. Just as it was, for Christ.

The LXX of Isa53:11 brings out this meaning beautifully, by deft use of two cases with "autos" (He, Christ). One of the cases is dative, so "autoi" -- dative is the case of source, conduit, relationship, beneficiary; and the other case is accusative, so "auton" -- accusative is the case of Hero, object, cause. What's so phenomenal about the entire passage in the LXX is the way prepositions are inserted, omitted, or piled up -- a frequent rhetorical device to show purpose or sweepingness of scope. Here, if you use a case which doesn't have the expected preposition, you are to know a SWEEPING PARALLEL is intended: especially, since the whole of Isa53 is written in a kind of parallel of contrast between God's Absolute Love and our utter disdain. So for years, scholars have pooh-poohed the inclusion of Isa53:11 in the LXX because the way "autoi" and "auton" are there used, seem to imply blasphemous things about Christ -- which 'seeming' immediately disappears, if you consult something stronger than your first six weeks of Greek in seminary. For the use of a case is deliberately multilayered, especially in Greek drama (which this is), and in Scripture.

So what's the drama? Well, what happened to Christ, can happen to us: His Humanity was BUILT UP in the Light and Righteous Word, so He could be Made Sin and thus Purified in the sense of Vindicated into Full Fellowship at even a Divine Level -- even, in His Humanity. God is making Christ's Own Humanity of Infinite Quality for the Purpose of Love. Then, the same verse (Isa53:11), due to those same cases, shows how each of us are to be made in Him, the same way. That is, to the extent we consent -- for the contract was, "if you will give". Which of course first means, Love Is Big Enough To Give.

Again -- and please forgive me for repeating this, it's a never-ending source of astonishment to me -- again, every verse in Bible 'looks' at this one.

• All the shema is based on it,
• all of the Jeremiah promise of His Head in our heads is based on it,
• all of what Adam looked forward to is based on it,
• and that's all the NT talks about, The Fulfillment Of This Contract.
• Moreover, in the "Church Fathers" and similar writings everyone respects so much, this one verse is very often quoted, used, analyzed.
• So all the criteria for including this verse, are met, according to the established rules of Biblical hermeneutics and textual criticism.
• Yet this is the one verse theologians and lexicographers universally exclude from translated Bibles, due to these two cases? Which a person with even a year of Greek in seminary, should know better than to exclude?!
• And the only old translations you ever find are never re-visited: Lightfoot's translation is allowed to stand, and he's venerated -- poor guy is probably screaming from heaven now: Redo that verse for me, willya?!
[Nerd note: since my pastor teaches the original languages of Scripture, I didn't have to go to seminary. But I did go to a good seminary near me, to get the books: to see what pastors-in-training are to learn. That's how I found BibleWorks, Mounce, and Wallace, for example. So notice: you learn in the first year or maybe the 2nd year, that case endings have multiple meanings, so you should be chary of translating Bible only one way. Bible is deliberately multilayered in meaning, to communicate Omniscience Wrote This Book. So you never just accept 'one' layer of meaning in a word, a case, or a verse. You expect and ideally try to find, all the skyscrapers of meaning layers. Lesser literature is also deliberately designed to communicate in multi-layer format, and especially, Hebrew and Greek -- multimeaninged, punning, irony permeates the heart of both languages, in the very warp and woof of every word. (Heck, even my Latin teacher taught us that about Latin in high school for three years, and stridently: so this is not a new idea solely with respect to Bible and its original languages.) But then, the seminary teachers warn you to always translate one way, in order to pass the tests (see the Appendixes of Mounce on prepositions). So now you know why suddenly all the former chary warning, is chucked -- if you can't pass the test with it, then don't remember the chary warning -- it won't help you pass! Clear sign that it's not God Who is motivating the translator/translating committee. Sorry: we care far more for respecting our peers than we do about the Word, and it shows!]

Bulimia is a type of eating obsession: and as with everything else in life, there is a spiritual counterpart of which the secular, is a subset. Here, 'spiritual' bulimia: you 'eat' doctrine, when you learn and believe it; when you love what you eat, it becomes quite easy to overeat. This makes for all kinds of problems in the rest of your life, since the activities foregone mean an atrophy is occurring. Like exercise on only one part of your body, the structural integrity of your life disintegrates. Technically, bulimia means you vomit up the food after overeating (big orgy practice deliberately done in SPQR, during its heyday), so you can eat again. Well, don't do that with doctrine. Trouble is, you won't recognize that's what you're doing, until your life is in shambles.

Hence Spiritual bulimia possibly has its origin in true love for God. If so, DDNA produces this love IN you, and you can't control what is beyond your power. For here's the irony: spiritual growth is supposed to result in you having only interest in God, eclipsing all else: "zeal for Your House consumes me." Hebrew verb heheli in Isa53:10 has the connotation of being caused to be sick with love (among other meanings). From there, God grows you further so that all your life is based ON this bulimia (idea of absolute motivation, Occupation with Christ). So that all your motives begin and end with Him. Anything else, is unimportant to you. So if you sleep, you sleep because of Him. If you work, you work because of Him. Not because of people, morality, your own attractions or distractions: just because of Him. So instead of harmful bulimia, your real 'sickness', is spiritual growth. You thus enter a dangerous stage, then, if you don't relearn all your motivations for daily life: relearn, to Associate Everything with Him.

The descent into bulimia might be slow, or sudden. In either case, you become more and more DISinterested in the stuff of this world, and more and more INTERESTED in the stuff of God. Romans 8 explains the problem and the process. At some point, your INTEREST reaches 'critical mass' (think of quantum mechanics in a black hole), and it TAKES OVER your other motives, such that if you don't find a doctrinal reason for a thing (usually phrased in terms of obedience or duty, since you WANT duty), well.. you're not interested. Those around you will deeply notice this change in interest, and some will feel.. um, jealous or unloved, by comparison. They will admire the change and will feel rejected, since you are preferring something other than, them. So your human relationships will have problems. You pay less attention to stuff in your life; and some of that lesser attention, is warranted; but some of that lesser attention, is a arrogance souring your life (i.e., because you shun certain things or people). So the real trick is to find a NEW reason for the daily life stuff -- one tied to doctrine. CREATE one, even. That's how you can turn the corner so this permanent addiction, becomes your unassailable integrity.

For as my pastor likes to remind us, Absolute Love, IS integrity. The very Integrity of God Himself. So the one growing in it, becomes weak with love, but VIA that weakness in God's System, is made absolutely strong (one of many layers of meaning in 2Cor12). Warning: once this love is entrenched in you, you will not survive if you don't stay in God's System from then on. Bible Doctrine is Power. Absolute Power. So must be run by the Absolute Holy Spirit. So The More You Grow In The Word, The Weaker You Become. So He can carry you ALL the time. Until you fall in love with Christ, you think on your own, apart from concerns about Him. But once Doctrine builds in you enough in God's System, you fall in love with Him (it's not emotional, but an absolute FOCUS). From that moment forward, you can't go on unless you stay in God's System. Period.

See, God's Love really IS the very opposite of human love. Human love is only motivated so long as the love object is "nice" to the subject. So the subject's 'love', is no love at all. Rather, it's just an ego trip. The subject loves how he FEELS, and becomes demanding of the object continuing to be 'nice' -- calling all that urge by another name, of course. Thus, becoming a USER. The one so used, learns gradually to run away from the subject, since the object comes to realize, hey, I'm just an object, not a real person: so-and-so doesn't love me, at all! Welcome to the stuff of many a tragic romance. Parents abuse their kids this way, and kids their parents; friends so abuse each other; whole nations abuse each other in this manner. It's in the DNA, this abuse.

It's not that people are never motivated by genuine desire and gratitude, but those motives are fleeting: for man is essentially fragmented in his soul as a result of Adam's sin, plus those of our own which we add. So any motive will be based on a kind of grasping neediness. Just as Adam grabbed the fruit from his wife because he needed to listen to her rather than God, so also all mankind ends up needing: so we have been grasping at each other, ever since. (Examine the text in Gen3 closely, see how post-sin Adam grasps at straws to blame his wife, the Lord, anyone but himself.. until he finally has no one else to blame, and only THEN admits he ate the fruit. That's the quintessential characteristic of all his progeny, however much we cover up our motives with figleaves.) These needs drive us, and any virtue we end up having in a day, is sheer Divine provision.

Or, satanic provision. For man on his own is completely and utterly helpless, fragmented in his thinking, with no capacity whatsoever. If man becomes interested in something related to God, i.e., morality, he gains some coherence in his life. So Satan uses morality above all, to marshal and herd mankind where he wants them to go. Because Satan is all about, works. But morality isn't designed to be satisfied by works, but by Grace. So the one working, works himself into bitterness, Gen4, Rom4, Num11:6. All this, is what 'love' in humanity ends up being: a torture chamber of unmet needs. Because the Need, is for God. Going, unmet.

Satan&Co. have this "DIOS" plan to make God foreign to us, and to make themselves, our gods. Their motives aren't strictly related to hating Him, but rather, to their own erstwhile need to love. Now totally morphed, this need is a lust to control, to put their own 'seed' in the believer. So what they will hit on more than anything else, is whatever competences you have. Man has no competences of his own; he must derive coherence from outside himself. Hence the two power systems, God's and Satan's. God's lower-level power system of morality, nationalism, family are all thus manipulated by Satan&Co. to divert the person into their power system: preferably, with the victims being none the wiser. So the push for competence is their cheerleading song. God's higher-level power system of learning His Son, by contrast, results in a far more competent person who is paradoxically weaker, due to that increased competence. So he is a bigger and more delicious target for Satan&Co. to attack. So again -- you cannot survive falling in love with God, except by staying in His System. Period.

So when true love for God hits you due to enough DDNA in you, then you are supremely vulnerable to all your essentially abusive, human-love motivations. They will bombard you, and Gramma Satan&Co. will 'help' to make these motives torture you, with the goal of either making you throw up the spiritual life, or .. just throw up. Continually. The only way out, therefore, is to stay in God's System. Holy Spirit will handle all the attacks. 1Pet5:7 not only works to enable listening under a pastor (the immediate context), but it works in all areas of life. "Casting" there, is the clever Greek verb "epiriptw" (pronounced "epi-RIP-tow"). It really means "throw on God like you would throw clothes on a pack animal", idea of throwing it on and forgetting about it (ties to Phili3:13-14): great word in the context of the earlier "put on humility" of v.5. "Humility" doesn't mean lowering your eyes at half-mast (that's Uriah Heep arrogance), but instead a happy recognition that God is handling your lovesickness and your other concerns, failures, the failures of others, so you don't need to think about them anymore. After all, He did a pretty good job of handling Christ's concerns, on the Cross!

See, there are three sources of conflict due to getting the real Word in you: first, the inherent differential between God's Absoluteness and your own finity, which was of a maxed differential, in Christ. Second, Satan&Co. lose in the Trial if they can't stop enough Christians from growing up in Christ to Pleroma completion, so they will do all they can to drive a wedge between God and the believer, preferably using slighted Truth (truth is the most powerful weapon to achieve a goal). Third, your own sin nature is by nature, grabby, always in an endless quest to feel good (i.e., that's why the woman grabbed the fruit, and why Adam got it from her). So these three 'forces' are in conflict, Romans 8. So, you groan. Trick is, to not give UP during the groaning, but to Remember To Be Carried By The Holy Spirit, even as Christ was. For His Situation was by far the worst and hardest; so if it worked for HIM, then it will work for you. If you don't learn this 'weakness' of being carried, you will inevitably burn up inside.

And the worst charnel houses ever, the saddest folks to be alive, are those very demons who torment us. Look in the Gospels at their behavior, then look in life for the same things going on. See all the idiots with saffron on their heads and orange garb, in India -- oh yeah, it's holy to live as a beggar? See all the idiots on Christian TV. There's also some guy running around Brazil who calls himself "Henry Christ", and you just know he's being demonized, else how could he remain so deluded, for so long? So look how obsessive, are those demons who torment him? (Probably more than one, like the "Legion" story in the Gospels.) Obsession makes a smart person, stupid. So don't be surprised, that the most obsessed person, is Satan himself. Hence Satan&Co. can't stop attacking Christ (which is why we are even targets), because they had grown somewhat in this Love, eons before Adam. But when the inevitable challenge to self-separateness occurred, they didn't weather it. Some failed in the adolescent stage.

Satan failed somewhere in late adulthood: you can see his sad transition in passages like Isa14 and Eze28. You can see the very witty, bitter sarcasm of his compatriots, in wry phrasing within fake holy books like the Book of Mormon, Koran, the Eastern religions. They all use Bible in those fake holy books, in ways you'd not detect, if you didn't know Scripture in the original languages -- to mock it, themselves, those who believe in the fake holy books. Incredible obsession.

And here's why: Love is ultimate power, so the finite one loving, feels weak. That brings up the question of price: how much to lose self, in order to gain expression of Love for the Love Object (here, the Son of God). God the Father calls Himself "Father" because that's how He uses His Love. Son calls Himself "Son" because that's how He uses His Love. Spirit calls Himself "Spirit" because that's how He uses His Love. So in God, this weakness, is His Most-Loved Strength. Nothing can defeat it. But if you don't grow enough, as Satan&Co. did not, then it will defeat you. You'll never be the same again, if you don't hang on to God's System, once this Love hits you. And it will hit you, if you are really learning Bible in God's System (not flashcard knowledge, but talking-over-with-God understanding of what you've been learning, why and what it all means).

Hence, their favorite ploy: if you've been spending a lot of time in God's System and you are habitual in the use of 1Jn1:9, then the motivation from Doctrine has suddenly skyrocketed in you. Satan&Co. will add to it very compelling urges to do nothing but study, seeking to deflect and to religify that activity into mere obsessivness. Else, they use that to wreck your life, patterned (roughly) after the strategy in the 2nd Temptation of Matt4: to tip Christ's Love for the Word, shown by His Response in the 1st Temptation.. over the edge. To tip you over the edge. And if they don't succeed with you, they will still bill you out to others, as obsessive. Crazy, in other words. After all, one must be crazy to so strongly believe in God, right?

Here again, we see the vast difference between Infinite and finite 'love', with the latter, really being a form of hatred-lust. For in mankind, we are considered 'weak' if we believe in God, or depend on someone else. But strong, if we do not. That's hatred, sorry. Machismo and oh-how-independent-i-am are really childish ideas, the kid who never quite grew up. So of course, we children wanna be grownups, waaaahhh! So we consider ourselves grown up, if we depend on no one. Especially, not on God.

The terms need defining. (Better still, just get the tapes, since no one else even he knows of, teaches the concept.) Here's how I understand what my pastor says, which I've also seen in Scripture (all over the place, frankly). In military parlance, "mutual flanks" are kinda like an advancing black hole, in that the space between them 'protects' them from a two-front attack. So you have two lines of troops advancing along parallel lines, with the 'vacuum' between, being more protected. Doctrine and Reciprocity (Truth+Will Positive, aka Love) are the two advancing flanks in your thinking as you keep on keeping on in God's System. But here's the problem, if you (like me) suffer from spiritual bulimia, which my pastor warns about: the Doctrine and the Reciprocity flanks don't stay in balance, so you have something like a gap or a salient, which thus renders you vulnerable to multiple-front, blitzkrieg attack. This is even more true once the troops are wholly together on the high ground, assembled. It's always the weak spot the enemy can effectively hit. For me, that's the body life, since I don't care about it anymore. Wrong decision. God made the body. He wants it to have its nature. God took on a Body (Heb10:5), so the body He made, with all its weaknesses, He Himself would actually have. So there becomes a gap between Doctrine and Motive (Love), when the love for the body, isn't attended.

Since most people have no love of Doctrine, that is their weak spot; so it's easy for the one positively learning Him, to account self healthy, by the contrast. Big mistake. The deeper sins of the life are those occurring later in maturation, not earlier (later sins are very subtle, playing on the RIGHT STUFF in your life). See Matt4, to see how Satan tempted Christ. So it's easy to get a salient or gap in your spiritual life due to being positive; and very hard to recover, once you see the problem. Keep on keeping on in God's System, not too much, nor too little study and motivation: they gotta develop IN TANDEM, my pastor warned. My church has been giving this warning for years. First time I went to Houston and ordered some tapes for local pickup, they warned me. It's a big problem, see. To which I didn't listen very well, during these last four years. With not-so-nice consequences, k? [Absent His Grace, I'd be dead meat right now.] You can bet I'm listening now: hence this webpage!

The whole point about parallel lines is that they can UNITE at any time to form a flanking pincer movement (think of Chinese chopsticks, scissors or tongs). The wider the distance between the two advancing columns, the more the advance must be for STRATEGIC reasons (narrow lines mean tactical). The advancing columns are GOING to a particular site to fight the enemy, but MEANWHILE, they can be attacked BY the enemy. For, you always choose to fight on terrain best suited to your own capabilities -- and, ideally, least suited to the enemy's. So the enemy's objective is to hit you when best suitable for him. Satan&Co. are our enemy, and GOD does the fighting, not us. But until we grow up enough in the spiritual life, we frequently mistake it for something 'we' are to do. So, we get creamed (see the story in Numbers when the spies came back to Kadesh).

So: you are to stay put and study, but BALANCE is critical. Too much study means you will religify it just like the guy who thinks he must give all his money away, etc. So as you grow in the Christian life, you are to FIRST become WIDER than you were before, as we just saw in the "Divine Nucleotides" table re 1Jn4:12-17: WIDTH is last and greatest, chronologically. Because it's WIDTH which makes for the stability of the structure. "Width" areas in your understanding are then most vulnerable, and they really need to be BALANCED. Obviously, one of the wider width areas, has to do with the body life, how you LIVE OUT the Doctrine you love so much. And that's the weak area: for the more Doctrine you know, the more you realize everything is so puny and puerile, you want to WITHDRAW, not advance. After all, during the spiritual childhood phase, you weren't supposed to TOUCH what was bad -- so, this lingering and now quite-unhelpful standard, motivates withdrawal, instead of advance. Or, hostility (looking down on the inferiority, Satan's hangup).

Hence the danger of one of the lines (doctrine or motivation) going too fast, versus the other. And since WIDTH is the issue in spiritual adulthood, the STRATEGIC value, can't be overstated. With a WIDE gap in between (post- spiritual adulthood), the opportunity to be caught unawares, or to be of uneven growth, is an occupational hazard. The strategic objective is to get both lines to the battlefield where they can MERGE, and under the "economy of force" and "concentration of force" doctrines, make for maximum power and coordination: God's blitzkrieg. So, before that point, these lines start to converge beginning at Spiritual Maturity (a coalescing level of "Occupation with Christ" which began back in spiritual adulthood, see First Reason for Invisibility in Part III of "Thinking" series), from what I can tell.

The convergence issue is multi-faceted, not quite so simple as two parallel lines which meet. You've got the SAME double-flank going on with respect to EVERY belief you have, EVERY facet of your life. For example, you might be bored with some doctrines taught. Well, that's a lag in motivation, so you can be and will be hit hard. Some pet areas of your secular life attract (or distract) you so much, you stop living on Doctrine well (i.e., problems between spouses or family members). So you will be hit hard. It's a SUM of many parallel double-columns, this "mutual flanks" question, not just the mutual flank problem of whether you go to Bible class every day (a common misconception among those who religify Bible study).

Assembly on the final battlefield begins at the Pleroma stage, which may last a long or short time -- battle isn't over until it's then FOUGHT, probably many times. Of course, at that point you've got to get the lines to coordinate in maneuvers, since the whole Pleroma 'field', is battle. In the Pleroma stage (and always true even prior), you only win if you realize God Is CARRYING You. For the objective is always learn, never 'do'. You only win by doing nothing of your own power. So, in your mind, you rest, knowing that the Holy Spirit is running the show. That process itself takes a lot of Doctrine to even recognize how it works! In the Pleroma stage, you've finally come to understand this.

In God, everything is ironic. In God's Plan, the more you grow, the LESS you are. Less interested in this body life, less able to handle it, less needy of human power, less of everything. Because you are turning into a SINGULARITY, a MERGED person -- merged with Christ, the Singularity of Singularities. So you come to realize you MUST be carried. You are actually becoming MORE helpless.. on purpose. God's Purpose. It's exactly the opposite of everything human. On Purpose.

Hence your volition, full as your soul is with all this Divine Writ, is the TARGET. God won't transform you at any time without your consent. Consent becomes harder and harder as you know more, because your human nature progressively cannot operate on the information. (Search on "MDb" in SatStrat.htm for some "Utterly Divine Physics" equations on this topic.) It's Spiritual Information, and the Romans 8 description of the oppositeness, is A Growing Reality in you. So only your will, not your body, can 'power' the decision. And that, only comes from the Holy Spirit Putting the Power in your volition. So it's a Catch-22, always: you have no power to vote yes, yet you do. And everything else, you can't use or use properly. So all you have, is that inky volition, swirling with all the temptations and confusion, blocking out all that gorgeous knowledge (when under pressure, under fire): do you still VOTE? That's the Trial test, and baby you're no baby anymore. But you've never felt so much more LIKE a baby, in your life.

As explained extensively in the Four Reasons of Part III in the "Thinking" series, your entire life is only about learning. You will eventually be able to SEE the results play in your life, but there is a long downtime (analogous to childhood and adolescence, and ideally lasting only as long). You don't really 'get it' about the Holy Spirit's Power until spiritual adulthood. And you get spanked a lot, because you don't 'get it' about How He Does The Work. You start to see the results -- and mistake them for something marvelous about you, so cockiness becomes a real problem. So you get lots of Discipline. Eventually the still-growing Doctrine and Reciprocity bring you to a kind of coalesced understanding where you actually can see how it's ONLY HIM Who's doing the work. At which point, a kind of crisis ensues, because your body just can't handle so much prosperity AMIDST helplessness. It isn't getting the credit, and it can't pretend it anymore, so.. well, depending on your personality, you'll have all kinds of problems.

Eventually, you learn how to CHOOSE TO BE carried. It's the hardest thing to CHOOSE. This is what Christ did His Entire Life. Being God, He could have done the whole thing Himself, but instead He chose to BE CARRIED. Because, then It Would Be Spirit's Choice What Got Made Out Of Christ. Not Christ's Choice. Now you know why He kept on saying stuff like "not My Will but Thy Will be done", and "My food is to do the will of Him Who sent Me." The "do" was to BE CARRIED. Even, through the Cross. Very different idea of what a true Work is, huh.

And this is the only way True Love can reconcile: you GET CARRIED by God. True Love is all about, giving; and never ever ever about 'working'. Paradoxically, you give the most, when you do NOTHING, allowing it all to be done TO you by the Love Object. Here, Father. Notice how Father Defers to Spirit's Choices, Because Father Loves the Holy Spirit. Of course, the Holy Spirit loves Father; being God Himself, the Spirit knows exactly what Father's Choices are -- but watch this -- The Spirit Loves to Carry out Father's Choices, when He Sovereignly acts on the Humanity of Christ! So Each of Them is Still Deferring to Each Other.

So it's not a work, then. For to be a "work", means the one doing the work, is doing it of himself. But that never happens -- not even, on the Cross. Especially, not on the Cross. Father did impute and judge sins ON Christ, but didn't make it easier on Christ. Christ Himself, RECEIVED them like the Lamb of God He was. Spirit, not Christ, empowered Christ to RECEIVE them without sinning. All He did, was keep on Wanting To Be Empowered: that's not a work! Spirit didn't pay for sins, either -- that's not a work! Father, Who imputed and judged the sins, obviously didn't pay for them, either. So not a work! So Each of Them can truly say to the Other(s), "I didn't do anything." Closest thing to an argument in the Godhead, this. What wit! Now it remains always true that the Greatest Work of All Time, was sheer Grace all around! Just as, being co-Equally God, They Chose to defer to Each Other, Each giving the Other One(s) the credit (which we know, given Their Self-Chosen Titles); so also ON the Cross, They Can Still Look at Each Other and Say, "You, Oh LORD, did this marvelous thing!" That's how True Love thinks, 1Cor13. That's Our God! Are we the most blessed persons in the universe, or what????

See how awesome is God's Love? For the second 'work' intrudes into the relationship, then torture begins. So God is out to demonstrate that even the most torturous event of all time, worse than all hell and the Lake of Fire combined, which was the Cross -- was not a torture, but a joy (Heb12:2). A relief, really, for this so-great Love of Christ. Which was also not a work, but Built By The Holy Spirit. Who doesn't call that a work, since Christ Chose it. So we incredibly-rich humans in Him get to also say, "I didn't do anything." So we can't torture ourselves over not doing 'enough', and yet it's always enough, and never enough, and we can't get enough of it! Satan&Co. are thus utterly defeated, and we did nothing to defeat them! Nor would or did God. For Love, has no equal. It needs no defending, needs no attacking, never fails, never condemns, and is always Just: 1Cor13. So, the only reason anyone goes to hell (and later, Lake of Fire) is due to Rejection of this Love, which begins ON the Cross, hence John 3:16. So much for the one loving God, being weak! May we all be, as weak as the Savior who Loves us...

Principle: your body is always your weak link. It will either frustrate soul advance or it will lag behind soul advance. Either way, you can't afford to let it get left out of your Bible class. So you have to limit study (if bulimia is true) and treat the rest of the day as Bible class during which you practice what you live on with your body.

Corollary: your body is thus your trebuchet, and that's exactly how the Holy Spirit will use it. A "trebuchet" was a seige catapault used to throw boulders at a castle, with the objective of breaking through the castle walls, so the invading infantry could get in. It of itself, was useless, cumbersome, easily defective; and to move it meant almost certain death, if you were trying to do so when your enemy was after you. And its value, well: something else and someONE else, made it valuable. It obviously had to be loaded with huge boulders (etc.) over and over and over and over, aimed properly, etc. Thankless task. No where near as glamorous as storming the castle walls. Yet without it, few castles could BE stormed. So without the body life being integrated with the soul life, your spiritual life will be dragging.

Evidence Test Corollary: In Evidence testing, the body life is always a kind of boulder, no matter how nice or not-nice your circumstances (and you'll have plenty of both), because the Doctrine is so big, You Must Be CARRIED By God. That's true anyway, but it's absolutely critical to surviving the Evidence Test (aka Pleroma) phase. You flunk when you try to do a thing yourself. You pass if you REST in the Holy Spirit doing it for you. Your Thinking Doctrine is Determinative, never what you are doing; particularly, your Thinking about Wanting Him To Do It. [Pleroma is the field, Evidence Testing is the combat happening ON that field, and the location of the field, is your soul full of Cycling Bible Doctrine.] This point can't be stressed enough. To see the 'physics' of it, load SatStrat.htm and then search on "MDs" or "MDb", and read that whole table. To see the stages of Evidence Testing as principles, see the "2-3-4-5" table in LordvSatan3.htm (Part III of the "Thinking" series). To see the inner thought pattern characterizing it, see LvS4d.htm (whole webpage is on Evidence Testing).

Notice how the tandem development of Doctrine In Your Head and Living On Doctrine With Your Head is ongoing. That's another set of parallel lines, which requires coordination between The Doctrine He is Feeding You, and the Motive You Have To Get And Live On It. Of course, within each of these four sets of parallel lines, are others (parallel lines are really infinite in number, nested and in need of integrative connection). There will be some doctrines you love less than others, so you'll have lag problems as a result; there will be some body uses of Doctrine you love more than others, so the unloved ones will lag. In short, this is a multi-phalanxed problem, not just two simple parallel lines of Doctrine and Motive. Those latter two are really the interconnected amalgams of many parallel lines which are specific: just as, DNA is constructed.

And, just as with viral RNA, there will be 'competitors' to come in and take advantage of your DDNA. See, the spiritual life is really powerful. You really do become much bigger in your soul, which results in a lot of new competences which can EASILY play secularly. So there will be many temptations to use those competences that way. Sometimes you are supposed to, and sometimes not. But at all times, you are supposed to only want to Use Them As God wants. Well, it's not easy to follow God's wants, if you've all these new, wonderful abilities -- especially if you've been feeling kinda icky and puny for so long. [Cultural note: "icky" is 1950's American childhood slang. You feel "icky" if you got ugly or smelly mud all over your skin, for example. Or, a bug touches your skin. Stuff like that.] Usually He wants you to go where you don't want to go, or to not go where you do want to go. So, for example, in bulimia that's ALL you want to do, is learn Bible and think it, not doing anything else at all. But that's when He wants you to stop so MUCH of that kind of Bible class. For, you're MERGED now, and you need to be MERGED elsewhere!

For most people, the problem is the opposite: they don't want to learn Him, but need to. So the viral RNA (temptation) will try to latch onto whatever competences a human has, to 'steal' love-for-God motives. Hence, all religion. Hence, all that good-deedism. At best, such evils are mutated love for God. Oh, how wonderful, such theft can be done in the very name of God! Yeah, in His Name, but He's not in it! How great a belly laugh Satan &Co. get when they can do a thing in God's Name which is not in God Himself! It's the high moment of their day. They love this more than any other game they prey upon the human race. Spiritual bulimia is just another satanic game, and like all satanic games, the believer is CONSENTING.

This is such a subtle and tough battle, because God created the addiction by putting all that Word in you! Ok, then: God can solve it, too. In fact, only God can solve it, So Learn To Be CARRIED. It's really dangerous, too. However, God can flip the results in a marvelous way, so there's never a need to be depressed as you see yourself so often fail. Because, the very Doctrine you overate, will be the source of your motivation to Get Out Of The Trap. The motive will be the recognition that all this study has kinda become its own idol, so it's stopped being the Real God. Which you come to realize, is not at ALL what you want happening: 1Cor13:1-3. You want HIM, not merely His Beauty or the beauty of the study. He's not His Beauty, merely. This recognition will break the viral RNA, and catapault you in the spiritual life.

The recognition will then be used by Satan&Co. to make you STOP eating. No, that's not what God is saying, either. You never go cold-turkey, but relearn the right proportions, staying in His System. (Now you know why movements like Promise Keepers and Alcoholic Anonymous, don't work: they only shift addictions, never balancing anything.) So it takes time to notch down the addiction to Bible, and regroup your thinking so that your Bible class day is Balanced.

They teach you at West Point the military blunders in history, not to denigrate those who made them, but because anyone can and does make them. So too, here. In our spiritual warfare the tiniest lack-of-tandem gaps get attacked by Satan&Co., because they don't have enough firepower to defeat a united advance. So the closer you're getting to the convergence point of Spiritual Maturity, the more you are attacked. It becomes continual, after that (and much more subtle, too, so you easily screw up).

Rx: if bulimic, use the bulimic tendency toward what you least want, but as a way to Live On The Doctrine You've Learned. For there is no getting over Love-for-God, except to redirect it in the area(s) where you know you're not 'behaving' as He wants. Satan never got over his love for Christ, breaking into negativity probably just before completing what for him was the last spiritual stage. That conclusion seems right, going by his obsessive, alternatingly-admiring-yet-acerbic, games (covered in the Appendix link of the "Thinking" series on the Home page, rightmost teal box). We face the same problem, once growth has gone on enough. Bulimia tends to make the person throw up the spiritual life by throwing up life, period. Not good. Devastating results; I've seen them in others, and in myself. Not Good!

The greatest of victories is if you can use the very qualities of a weakness, to trebuchet (catapult) an even bigger strength, 2Cor12:9. God does this. I call this, "the flip", and it's like flipping a negative derivative into a positive one, fantastic power. For me, the "MERGING!" meaning is like a nuclear weapon. All this DDNA merging me (I'm doing nothing, God's doing everything). So no longer will the temptation to be discouraged over my puny humanness, matter. He's doing it all, and He's merging it into my body, even as He merged it into my soul. Can't survive, moi, without this MERGING meaning constantly on my forehead, like tfellin.

Finally, at last, it's worthwhile to engage in life's usual activities, knowing the larger reality is that He's making a MERGER out of every second of them! And if it's God's Doing, then it's God's Quality, and God's CHOICE What's Being Done. Therefore no morE need I worry about whether He's getting value out from me. No more need I worry that my desire to reciprocate His Love is powerless, with the result that whatever gets accomplished in this body, is always SO inferior compared to What I Wish He Could Get From Me. Because The Holy Spirit Is Not Powerless. Just as He made me a spiritual being that first second I believed in Christ, which belief alone accomplished nothing; so also He makes Infinitely Beautiful and Effective my love. Heh: God can just think a thing and it happens. So the believer in Him can just WANT the reciprocation to occur, and He makes it happen. By learning. Not by magic. Double-heh.

There will be many symptoms, if you are overboard. Trouble is, those SAME symptoms are also symptomatic of the burgeoning LOVE, itself. Kinda like the difference between an exercised muscle which is properly fatigued and one which is over-exercised, one day you wake up and find you can't use either that muscle, or those around it, well. Then you know you overdid it. Trick is to detect the overdoing beforehand (yeah, and if I could do that with stocks, I'd be richer than Croesus right now). The Holy Spirit alone can detect it, and since you are a brainout the second you believe in Christ, you're not supposed to lean on your own understanding, anyway. So try to plot out the 'evidence' in your mind or on paper, pro- or con- so much study. There are some times when you SHOULD go overboard. Very hard to detect: but the Cross was one of them. Combat is one of them. Scrimping to save for something you really need to get is one of them. Notice how 'balance' sometimes requires imbalance? So it's a subtle thing, this question of overdoing Scripture study. It has to be measured against the other stuff you know God wants you to do.

No one but you can make this determination. However, if you are going overboard, there will be others in your periphery to warn you of that fact. False warners, and true ones (God always likes a higher, messier game -- so do Satan&Co). So listen to the warnings, if you are having trouble deciding if you are overboard, and sift them as you would intelligence data. Here's the trick I use: the uppermost truth, is the overlooked obvious, so the loud meaning will be the opposite of the truth. Sometimes you have to cycle that testing logic several times before you can simplify diagnosis, but it works. Satan&Co. know it too, so sometimes they play quiet. But God knows true from false: so keep on with 1Jn1:9.

Don't agonize over this. If the problem is really big, you'll only see a little bit at a time. You have doctrinal instincts. Follow them. The doctrinal ones you can prove. Not the conclusions from them which you can't prove. If you find yourself mulling over the issue more than five minutes, get up and do something you know you need to do, revisit the issue later. I sure wish I had done that!

When a person is finally permanently 'addicted' to being in God's System, Satan&Co. switch from the tactic of dissuading you from it, to gorging you with it. So they 'enhance' the desire, so you almost feel you are sinning if you're not studying all the time; that's how so many hermits got that way, in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. You can see the demonic 'enhancements' play en masse, when visiting Christian chat channels that have folks relentlessly spouting Scripture. So this 'enhancement' goes undetected; since if one keeps on eating, the body is satisfied: so you can't tell anything is wrong. So also undetected, the bulimia seeps into the life's attitudes, so there is this Subliminal Distaste For Anything Which Isn't Bible-Related. Count on it, those around you will notice the distaste, and they will feel hurt. Count on it, your body and your outside life will disintegrate quickly. But you won't notice it.

Isa 53:11 in the Greek OT is written with these hugely-expansive infinitives: five of them. Fourth Aspect will show the whole verse. For now, you need to know that when one uses only an infinitive, without objects, an all-comprehensive function is designated. It's an Attic Drama Greek rhetorical style. [Bible's Greek is really five types of Greek, and it used to be remembered that much of the Bible uses Attic Greek. Lately, scholarship is so bad, even renown scholars dismissively state that the NT is mostly koine. Wrongo. And even when koine is used, Greek drama and cultural concepts are constantly referenced. To show how the High Epic Drama of Salvation is available to the Common man ("koine" means "common", as in "common people", "communion").] So ALL of your life is about getting the Light of Him. Hence, ALL YOUR LIFE is Bible class, not just the time when you sit down and listen to your pastor teach, or when you sit down and cogitate (write out, in my case) what you learned to learn it more. Everything Is About Learning, down here. Not earning. Body is too corrupt for you to do anything with it God likes -- except, have it be a womb. Certainly Christ Himself didn't use His Own Body except as a womb. It's dead material, not able to understand Doctrine, is only affected in a rudimentary manner (corpuscles have no spiritual life, get it). But it IS important in its own sphere. So you do learn Bible from it -- only if, you are in God's System and breathing 1Jn1:9 as needed, and CYCLING what you've been learning to apply it to the rest of your day. It's only Bible class, your life, to train you to become something, post-death.

Paul likens the whole of life to a pregnancy, in Rom8:11ff. Which is, what happened ON the Cross, Isa53:11. So what's getting produced during the REST of your day, you cannot see. But God the Holy Spirit Is Doing It, so it has to be Bigger Than Birthing A Universe, every second (He won't waste His Time on something Father doesn't want to see). "3rd Aspect" will say more on that topic. For now, just realize that it's only a question of What Bible Class Does God want for you to have THIS second. Your obligations in life are Bible class, and you know what times to take those Bible classes, by the nature and timing inherent to the obligations. In short, you aren't giving up, anything: just redirecting which 'classes' you're taking, every second of every day of your life!

For Isa53:11 rescues what is otherwise an inferior way to spend your life; so that even its sterility bears more kids (Isa54:1) than the study of Doctrine itself. Which is as it should be, since God is 'giving up', so to speak, the time you COULD be spending on sheer study, which the positive person knows is THE spiritual life (learning and living on Doctrine, period: no works, no ritual, no emotion, etc). Yet what Christ had to do was GIVE UP sheer study in favor of running around talking to people like you'd talk to kindergarteners. Notice how He only talks in parables; notice how His BODY got the sins imputed, and He Does Nothing But Hang There. The first, the running around, was used by the HS to strengthen Him to have the stamina for the second, the Cross: during which, nothing ran, EXCEPT His Thinking. That's the two-pronged effectiveness of spiritual life on body life, under the most extreme circumstances.

Well, your body is getting all kinds of hassle 'imputed' to it, too, in whatever structures God has given to your body life right now. Do not spend time on how you yourself screwed up and thus have the problems you do. Take Paul's advice, in Phili3:13-14, Keep Moving. God owns you, so owns your problems. It's not as though He didn't always know you'd mess up. Same, for anyone who messes on you. So handle it all, the way Christ did -- Live On the Doctrine during it. That's a Birthing of DDNA Going On. Seriously. Sheer study sets UP the DDNA, but until you Live On the Doctrine WITH the body (even if brushing your teeth), the Birth Process Doesn't Finish. Many births of thought-on-body-life are needed to make you big enough so that millions of believers who didn't choose the spiritual life, can be 'housed' in your kingdom, so the requisite aggregate sweet savor forever, will be occurring (synergy in aggregate of Divine Thinking in the polity). So if you are such a royal screw up, isn't God owed the ability to Make You Bigger To House all those other royal screwups who didn't want Him to fix them? Triple-heh. This is the 3rd Aspect of DDNA.

Remember all those verses about how God is pleased to take the foolishness of man, rather than his wisdom, and make Divine Glory out of it? Well, 99% of our day is foolish, no? So boring and mundane and frustrating. So, He makes those things act like wombs ("me amal", labor pains, in Isa53:11's Hebrew), birthing Divine Thinking from them; just like at the Cross, Christ birthed our lives and our spiritual life for Church (theme of Ephesians, esp. Chapter 1). So when I'm Filled and doing anything with my stupid body, it's Just As Much Bible class, Just As Much Doctrine learning. But, via the body. Because, the body needs it too. Yeah, it's far more gorgeous to learn Doctrine without paying any attention at all to the body, but we have bodies, and lives with needs. And the first of those needs, is the need for Doctrine In You To Be Circulating While Using Your Body. More important than food: Matt4:4!

More important than, but not alone. Not good that God should be alone, so there are Three, and They all Voluntarily unite in a corporate structure, hence Their Self-Chosen Titles of Father, Son, Spirit. And what Decree does Father make? If you will give Your Soul as a substitute for sin, Isa53:10. They choose the LOW! So, the Lord says in Matt4:4, Man does not live on bread only, but on every (taught) Word which proceeds from the Mouth of God. So now "bread" due to the Bread of Heaven going into your head, has a more noble role it plays. For, your body HOUSES this Manna from Heaven. Sacrifices and offerings He did not desire, but a Body Father prepares for Son. Using, YOU. You are part of that Body, which is why YOU have a body. So this bread for the belly, now is rescued from an ignoble purpose, to a noble one. See how much Bible class learning CAN come from a body thing?

So, God saves the Best for Worst, even as the Cross -- once you've GOT Doctrinal DNA set up from previous learning, THEN the body's actually being MADE reproductive of the spiritual life by the Holy Spirit. Just as He did, to Christ's Humanity on the Cross. Hence, learning is so accelerated by the body junk you gotta do, you can't imagine. I wish I could explain that last sentence, but you wouldn't believe me: just try it yourself, and see for yourself. He shall see, be satisfied, says Isa53:11's Hebrew. Oh, how True!

So the body life under the Spirit, is indeed a critical component of spiritual advance. It comes second, after the learning (i.e., in the other 23 hours of your day), and it needs much more time to get attuned to the Doctrine, than your soul needs. So you can practice what you learn, the rest of your day. That's how the life is meant to be: "neither to the right [too much study], nor to the left [too much body stuff]."

Webpages most related to this 2nd Aspect are Third and Fourth Reasons in LordvSatan3.htm, LvS4d.htm's Combat table, first four bullets in Fixes.htm, and the Seven Doctrine Diamond Facets of LvS4b.htm. Point is, that living on the Doctrine is the reason why you GET it, in the first place. It's easy to forget the body, because as you grow you learn No No No No No ignore-the-body. But once the learning is IN you, it switches to Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes -- like it did, on the Cross. All along the road, you are supposed to keep balancing between Thinking and body-stuff, so that they connect and coordinate. Again, preserving the protection of mutual flanks at the weakest, most helpless link: your body life. Christ gave Himself as a Substitute for the Church to sanctify HER, says Eph5. Her, the Body. Hint, hint!