Can You Trust Scripture? Trust Life! - GODSEARCH Episode 5
Hi, this is Michael Chevak. Welcome to God's Search. This is episode five. We had four was the last one. That's pretty easy to figure out since it was before five. We were talking about the four cardinal directions to all reality, but here we have five and we add one other little component, which is human choice, human ability.
Now in the last episode, we talked about something that's very, very important, and it's so important I want to emphasize it again. We human beings on our God search have an ability. We are natural creatures just like birds, bees, trees, insects, other animals, but we are also supernatural from the Greek meaning beyond nature.
We can do things that nature doesn't do without us. We can do things like create computers and create automobiles that only we can do. It's beyond mere earthly nature to do, and when we do that, we get a conflict because we bring into creation human creations and things can go bad.
That's where we get pollution from. That's where we get all of these conflicts over abortion from. Abortion is simply a form of technology. It's more complicated than that because it involves the intimacy of a woman's body, but it is technology, and all of our difficulties that we are having are really a conflict between our supernatural selves and our natural selves.
It's very important if we're going to use our hands, each of the five. five digits, and we have it in our feet. We do things on the earth with five. We walk on the earth with five, and yet we're surrounded by four cardinal directions.
We are in incredibly critical, powerful, spiritual force in existence. That's what a God search is about. And if you're going to learn how to use your spiritual talent as a supernatural being, in harmony with your natural being, so that your mind works with your body, and all our minds work with the bodies that we all share, including the body of the planet, and all life and creation, we have to learn certain guidelines.
Now, where do we get these guidelines from? If we go back to the first podcast, I brought up the whole issue of authority. Who do you trust? Who can you trust completely? The first episode of God's search, if you go back, you'll see, we talked about the problem is who's the actual 100% authority over your life, over your decisions?
Who is that perfect? What mere human being? Is that perfect? What mere human institution? Is that perfect? That you can follow their rules and regulations 100%? So where do we get the knowledge on our God's search to use our hands, the five digits, and where to walk with our feet?
Where do we get it from? It's very tricky because although it's very difficult to say that there is absolute 100% reliable guidance from mere human institutions. And I say mere out of respect to those religions and those governments that believe they do have a certain divinely inspired task of illuminating people and guiding people.
But everyone makes mistakes. Institutions make mistakes. So where do we get our guidance from on how we use our supernatural ability together with our natural ability? It's very difficult. It's very, very difficult.
Where do we get it from? We get it from our God's search. Our God's search doesn't take place in a vacuum and it doesn't take place in a book. It takes place from life experience. Life experience is the foundation of knowledge.
Such as scriptures. scriptures cause people a lot of difficulty because they invested with all sorts of authority. And these days we're having so much difficulty, for instance, in the area of sexuality where certain scriptures are extremely stringent and people are trying different divergent ways of living that are not in harmony with the tradition that had been in place for thousands of years.
And at the same time, there are questions that these different approaches to lifestyles open up, which are deep, serious, spiritual and religious, if not governmental issues. But let's go back to the square one, because it's really important.
Our authority comes from life experience. If I jump up, life experience tells me I'm going to come down. If I jump up, I'm going to come down. Now I can neutralize that. I can put little wings on my ankles like Hermes.
and fly or I can put little jet rockets on my ankles and I can do anything I can to neutralize the gravity. I don't, I can go to space where the gravity is neutralized. Whatever it is, I have to neutralize it because there is a law.
No one wants to admit that there are laws to the universe. That's an American system. We don't pay attention to laws, but there are laws. And when we jump up, we come down. We can neutralize the laws, but we don't destroy the laws.
We don't negate the laws. This is a fundamental insight. Now, if I were to write scripture in a biblical style, because that's my particular preference, and I would to say thou shalt not stand at the edge of a chasm with thy back against my breath, the word in Hebrew for, you know, breathing or wind or spirit is the same word.
And thou shalt not stand with your back to my breath for verily I will smite you, meaning the wind will come against your back, blow you off the chasm and you'll die. I can write it in biblical terms, but it is very much a life experience.
Recorded life experience is the foundation to biblical and certain scriptural laws that have been used as foundations for government. This is a very important thing. You will see in the Bible, you will see, for example, laws for eating certain foods.
And you'll notice that there are animals that burrow, there are animals that eat other decayed animals. There's animals that are in contact with disease. There's desecration of life where you eat the baby and the mother at the same time.
All of those kind of stringent laws that weigh people down and they're they're trying to rebel all the time against it. They're there basically because they were simple life experience that said if you do that, you will not have an experience of good.
The experience of good or God will be removed from you because you will do things that are destructive such as you will get sick and therefore it will seem as if God has withdrawn God's love from you because you've been getting sick when in fact you've broken a few basic laws of life.
You don't eat contaminated food. You don't eat, pardon the expression, feces. Which is why there are certain laws in the Bible that govern animals that are in contact with that. So life is the foundation of your God search, your experience in life moment-to-moment on how you interact with life, and how your life interacts with the greater life.
That's the foundation of your God search. That's the foundation of the amazing experience of God searching. So let's talk a little bit more about Scripture, because it causes people very, very great harm and difficulty, because the Scriptures have been identified with religious authorities that have presumed absolute certainty.
It's very, very painful and very difficult. Because Scriptures oftentimes are based on life, and they're oftentimes based on what is productive for life, and what will enhance life. You have laws in there that are very ancient, but tried and true.
This is where a lot of the laws around sexuality take place. The Bible, for example, is completely focused on what are the relationships that are necessary to reproduce and have more children, because the more children you have, the more you have workforce, the more workforce you have, the more you have wealth and prosperity.
So reproduction became a very important thing, and using our supernatural technology to concentrate what are the laws around reproduction to make more human beings so we can become dominant on the planet.
That's a very, very important thing. And in there also, and it's very controversial, because in, for instance, in Deuteronomy, you'll see certain laws that actually kill people who are involved in cross-dressing.
And of course, there is a class. problems with men with men in in the Bible and later on in the in Christian scripture it extends to women as well. These all have their foundation on the fact that these are life-based relationships that are fundamental.
Fundamental does not necessarily mean fundamental list. That's a different thing entirely. That's when you have an ideal that is part of the biblical knowledge that's built into the design and you make it a rule across the board and then you violate another law of reality which is free will and individuality and your inner sense of conscience.
This is an important thing, a very important thing. So let's just clear this messy, messy, mess around scripture. The reason is is that scripture is extremely valuable. It shouldn't be discarded just because it's inconvenient.
It took well over 5,000 years before human civilization could grow and actually declare thou shalt not murder as something as a general principle, as a general principle. 5,000 years, do we need to discard 5,000 years of knowledge?
No, we don't. So rather than tear down the institutions of the past, which a lot of extreme liberalism is doing, and then bring it back into a war where we're building up the extreme religionism of the past to balance that, which is an extreme conservatism, let's be life focused here, but do it in a way where we balance the laws of supporting life with differences of human abilities and proclivities and talents and supernatural vision,
because we're not merely natural creatures. We're also human. This is a really important point if we are going to bring our country together and bring the world together, because as I said, the integration of the supernatural abilities with the natural abilities require a development of a kind of transcendent spiritual knowledge that is larger than both.
If you're a Christian, you would call that Christ. If you are other religions, you would have other comparable terms for that. The important thing is that there is a knowledge beyond. either our own mind's ability to create for ourselves and a knowledge beyond merely the earth and the planetary.
There's something else beyond where the human being can actually increase our spiritual power, increase our divine potential. And what we can do is we can learn to navigate our world with a higher knowledge.
So what we do for ourselves with our supernatural ability is harmonious with nature. But at the same time, nature doesn't control us in a way where we can't express ourselves. There is not a single person out there, myself included, who has not felt the tug of war between these two aspects of ourselves.
So let's talk about law in a very simple way. Let's suppose, I love automobiles, by the way, as analogies. I gave an automobile analogy last time in terms of sin. I thought it was a good one. Let me give you another one.
You're driving down a highway and you're having a great time. Let's suppose it's convertible. The convertible tops down and your hair is blowing in the wind and you're having a great time. You're going like 75 miles an hour and you're not aware of it and you get a car accident.
Well, life is teaching you a lesson. If I were to write a biblical law, I might say thou shalt not speed because it will result in death. I will turn my back from you, saith the Lord, and you will suffer.
But the real law here is not speeding. It's that we're not aware that we're using the highway with other people and life. Life is more important than us. Life, we are part of life. It's more important than each of our individual lives.
When we're driving on the highway, we have to be aware of it. Now, here's the difficulty with rules. All of a sudden, enough people have car accidents and they put up speed limits. Do not go over 65 miles an hour.
Well, that's a nice hard fast rule. But what happens if you are in the automobile and someone is sick and has to get to a hospital immediately, or it's dangerous, do you stay at 65 miles an hour or do you hit carefully the gas pedal, get up to 75, 80, whatever you need to get the person to a hospital in order to stay alive?
You see the fixed law. has to be varied to protect life. Do you see? There is not a single biblical law that is not interpreted in order to preserve life or interpret it in order to enhance individual self-expression in life so that there are no contradictions that hurt our ability to enjoy the goodness of what life has to offer.
But we can also ask the question, let's suppose I'm someone who is a car racer, professional car racer, Mario Andretti. And let's suppose that I can drive at 95 miles an hour, safer than anyone can drive at 65 miles an hour.
Why shouldn't I have the freedom to just be myself and break the law? Because I don't need it. The law is there to protect me, but I can drive more safely than the average person. Here. Speed limits, which are general rules for the general population, do not fit everyone and we have the same problem with moral laws.
We're seeing it in the United States of America right now in our complicated discussions around sexuality. So people put up the laws and there's another spiritual component. Let's suppose you're driving in the car and you're a nervous person and there's a speed limit of 65 miles an hour.
And you're so nervous that you're holding the wheel this tight and you're driving 45 miles an hour and creating a problem. Your fear of these laws would be so great that it causes a problem for other people around you.
That's what happens when people are so dogmatic about religious laws and they hold on fearfully. And it prevents us from enjoying the delight and the experience and the rush of a God search where we are part of life.
We are life giving ourselves over to life and receiving life back. And then we'll do this on another episode. The most interesting of all is that our very basic fear of speed enters into our subconscious mind, which is very creative.
And we'll talk about that and we create without even knowing it an accident because we are so afraid of it. We bring it into a reality. The very thing we fear is that which happens to us. These are all of the different levels to law that are part of a God search.
And it's very tricky, but very important because there is no reason to throw out. 5,000 years of knowledge. There are magnificent scriptures of all kinds out there. The Rig Veda, which is magnificent, it's a Vedic scripture.
In the original Sanskrit, it has a flavor of where you're sensing the rhythm, you're sensing the rhythm that's in nature every moment in the writing. The Quran is a fascinating scripture. It is believed to be transmitted by the angel Gabriel.
It causes difficulties for some people because of the authoritarian things that are in there, but the Quran can't be properly interpreted without the hadith or the sayings of Muhammad that go along with it.
Scriptural interpretation and the scriptures themselves are twins. They're needed. You can't have one with the other. Why? Because scriptures are fundamentally recordings of human life experience. And once they are recorded, they have to be updated by human life experience so that the laws get updated by new experiences, which we call precedence.
And then the precedents come in to modify the laws. And then the laws over time become adjusted or changed according to new life experience. And that's what's happening now in our world as we approach new kinds of marriages with people who have the same sex or people who have multiple genders.
These are the things that are happening through life experience where our laws are having to adjust to deal with the human experience of their personal God search. So it's really important that you understand that even though it is very difficult to find anyone or any scripture that nakedly all alone lays down absolute 100% rules and laws that are always 100% accurate and true and never have to be interpreted.
Nonetheless, there is great human experience and great human authority that is built into that. And we should pay attention to it. We should be paying attention to it. I don't know. Every child has had a parent.
And a parent will say to a child, don't put your hand in the flame. You'll burn your hand. Well, any child who has a God search spirit on the inside of them is going to test reality and have an experience of life and put their finger in the flame.
And it's going to hurt. And by doing that, it's going to hurt. doing that, they're doing what we all need to do, which is trust our life experience when we're in doubt about the authorities, which the child is.
But we also have to pay attention to some of the learning that came before. Some of the learning that came before is important. We do not have to reinvent, thou shalt not commit adultery. We don't have to reinvent.
Thou should not purger yourself on a witness stand. These are important human benchmarks. And if you throw them out, life is designed. As we said last time with a certain order, there's a certain way life works.
When you sow and reap, you bring back experiences, you will relearn from life that if you do these things, you receive back less than God, less than good. Life itself will teach you these very, very ancient observations that became law.
Very significant nuance. So I'd like to say, please, if you are extremely conservative, God bless you. Your view is terrific. If you're extremely liberal, God bless you. Your view is terrific. But the issue is excessive authority that is placed on scripture without correct spiritual knowledge.
Now, if you remember, I spoke about the blue team and the red team, which we're all suffering from, and that kind of divisiveness. And I said they both have great ideas, but they don't have context. The context is not the scripture.
The context is not the tradition. The context is life. Life. What produces good? What enhances the value of life for the world, for society, for each individual and their family? This is a complex learning that we all have to go through on our God search individually and together.
It's not easy. It's not easy. There is no absolute authority that can give us rules that are absolutely so perfect that they're cement. They're cement. Look, let's suppose it's murder. Okay. There's murder.
Well, is it murder or is it self-defense? Is it murder or is it insanity? Did the person kill another person? kind of accidentally, so it's manslaughter or manslaughter. Was it manslaughter one or manslaughter two?
Even a law as absolutely ancient, 5,000 years old like that shall not murder, requires intelligent, sensitive, spiritually awake interpretation by people who have gone on a God search and they understand how to discern what we call here, experiencing the truth, how to govern, how to shepherd, how to bring things in alignment.
So all of these polarizations that are ripping us apart personally and are ripping ourselves apart as a nation, they get woven together because the authority is a cooperative authority. It is all of us working together to balance each other with helpful viewpoints that allow us to take in more and more and more of the many, many variables that are involved in making a correct moral decision.
It's a very tricky word, moral, because unfortunately, extreme religionism has made it moral, moral. Do this, that's not right. And it's an either-or. And as we said at the very beginning, when you do either-or, you divide and you can't experience the unity that is part of the living fabric of the God experience.
We'll talk more about that, because culturing that unity is the key to solving so many, many problems. So many problems. But you see, we have to avoid extreme religionism, but we also have to avoid tearing down all of the goodness that our civilization produced through religion, through many, many centuries of hard work and life experience that produced tried and true relationships and understandings that produced a productive and flourishing human civilization.
The knowledge is there. The knowledge can be added to. The knowledge can be adjusted. Certain laws can be neutralized, but they can't be negated. You still need in some form. Male and female to make a baby.
These days, there are all sorts of different artificial variations that allow that to take place. But you can't escape. fundamental law. This is how we have to think about scripture and authority and governmental laws.
They are important guidelines. They are not complete guidelines, because guidelines have to take place in a living, breathing, wondrous experimentation with life. An experiment comes from the Latin, which is the same root word as experience.
Life is the foundation of the authority that we will draw on as we continue this God search life. And you will notice, as you either continue your God search, or begin your God search, that you notice that as you continue or begin There is a fluid communication with life.
Life speaks to you. You learn lessons and adjust. And as you adjust, you sew differently and you reap differently. There is this incredible living, breathing, intuitive interaction between your own self-knowledge and the knowledge you release into the world that affects other people.
It's a dialogue. A God search is a living, breathing dialogue with reality. I'd like you to do me a favor. This whole podcasting thing is for me, it's a whole new life experience. I don't know really what I'm doing.
I'm making it up and I'm adjusting as I go along. I hear good comments, I hear bad comments, I hear in between comments. Please go to yourgodsearch.com and open up a dialogue with me. If you have any questions about what I'm explaining, please ask, but please give me constructive comments.
Don't be mean, that's not necessary. But I really do wanna hear from you as well. As we continue this whole God search together, we'll vary the format. There'll be a lot of people who I'm gonna be bringing on who are fascinating people who have been on their God search for a long time.
Many are religious, many are not religious, but I think you'll enjoy their company. I'm trying to do right now in these initial lessons is build a structure to how we think together so we can converse so that when I ask questions, we're in the same universe together.
Because as I said, the G word is a very dangerous word and everyone seems to have a different interpretation about who God is. So bear with me, please, as these initial episodes take place and we're building a kind of language that can facilitate a deeper, and more dynamic god search that's more varied.
I'd like to go to certain places of worship that I think you would be fascinated with as well. So when you get your five fingers out into the world to do things and you're feeling your spirit and what you want to do in your individuality, that's great.
Don't be afraid to talk to someone and get an opinion on their life experience. An older person, a younger person. Don't be afraid to look at an ancient text such as the Bible to see what they have to say that you can draw upon because why make a mistake?
Why make a mistake? If you can have help from an ancient text or from another person with more experience and that can prevent you from putting your finger in the flame of the kid. like a child. So don't be afraid of these things.
Don't be afraid of scripture. Don't be afraid of conservative views. Don't be afraid of liberal views. Look for the truth and the wholeness in it and bring that unity and goodness into everything you do, into your causal nature as a supernatural being.
You'll find your life becomes transformed. So thank you again. This is Michael Chevak and this is God Search. Uncover God. Discover God. Recover God. If you've lost God, it's there. It's there in the fabric of life.
Life teaches us. Life is the only teacher. I'm just trying to give it a human voice, but life is our teacher. Come join us. Be on a God Search. If you're in life, you're already on your God Search. So keep it up and have fun.
Thank you so much. See you next week.