Emerging Church of Arizona - Holy Triage

At the height of The Great Depression we heard FDR say “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” in his first inaugural address. The power of fear is wrecking havoc on America right now. If people refuse to spend their money because of fear then we will lose more and more jobs. Americans are causing the current economic crisis because they are living in fear. Our country is addicted to drama, we are glued to news channels and websites just waiting for the next catastrophe to happen. Our fears are actually creating the next catastrophe. Fear is an evil artist because it paints illusions that we will act upon and then our fears becomes reality. In the year 2005 a movie called Crash was released that painted a few brilliant pictures of how our fear actually causes bad things to happen. Americans today are gripped by fears of terrorism, opposing political forces, spiritual fears, economic fears and more. How are these fears negatively shaping our society? In America the number one prescribed drugs are for anxiety and depression.

- Antidepressants most-prescribed drugs in the U.S. according to The Center for Disease Control

- Of 2.4 billion prescriptions in 2005, 118 million were for antidepressants

- 25 percent of adults will have a major depressive episode at some point

The institutional church is just as guilty as the secular media of fear mongering. Fear is very, very damaging to society. Using fear to control people is witchcraft. Generating a sense of fear in people whether intentional or unintentional is placing a curse on people. Our fears are destroying both individuals and our nation. Using fear to control people is using a powerful psychological weapon. Using fear to motivate may produce quick results, but it literally will eat people alive from the inside out. In the movie Apocalypto Jaguar Paw teaches his son about fear in the line “Fear is a disease. Strike it from your heart.” How many times does God tell people in the Bible not to be afraid. Pastors who teach God's word will be held to a higher accountability because they have the potential to plant the damaging seed of fear which becomes a disease inside of people souls. If there is one thing we should seek to abolish in the hearts of people all around us it is fear. If we can cure the fear then maybe we can avoid prescribing the drugs that only control the symptoms of fear. Using fear has provided a temporary benefit to drug company's, to politicians, to pastors and many others. As fear destroys people from the inside out it will steal their focus, motivation, marriages, families and will eventually lead to reckless living, addictions or even suicide. Today it is fear that is truly America's greatest threat.

What are you afraid of?

What important aspects of your life is fear currently destroying?

Those who practice pure evil and pure good require a thorough understanding of the truth. In order to lie one must first know the truth. Good and evil both use the truth, but in different ways. This is why the fall of man in the book of Genesis entailed eating fruit from the tree of knowledge. Satan tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden by accusing God of trying to keep them inferior by telling them not to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge. The fallen angel satan used his own knowledge of the truth to attempt to make himself like the most high God. The fact that it was the tree of knowledge should tell us something significant. I can show you how both those who practice pure good and pure evil understand the truth by using virtually every hero movie ever released. I doubt movie producers understand the depth of what makes there movies appealing. In both Fight Club and The Dark Night the bad guys had a thorough understanding of the truth and were not enslaved by greed. The strange fact that is not too hard to prove that pure evil lives amongst the truth, but uses an altered version of the truth to gain control over people. For evil to thrive it is absolutely necessary for evil to understand the truth. I am sure you have heard the saying “it's a thin line between love and hate”. In order to fully exploit the truth you must first have a thorough understanding of it. The Bible says with increased knowledge comes increased accountability. Why? Learning the truth actually makes us more susceptible to evil. This is why believers must walk in the spirit to avoid the deeds of the flesh. How is it possible that the Bible states in the last days people called good evil and evil good?

Pure evil is not tempted by greed, power or lust. Pure evil knows the truth and is freed by it the same way that good people are freed by the truth. The most evil people in existence are even too smart to end up in prison. The people occupying our prisons have actually fallen victim to evil. True evil people will keep themselves free from prosecution while they go about controlling people in malicious manners. Evil works hard to learn what makes people tick so that it can take pure truth and distort it just enough to control people. If by altering the truth evil still fails to control or exploit people then the the only other option is to destroy people. This is where you will find many murder suicides taking place. If evil cannot have you then it will attempt to kill you and sometimes those whom you love. Here is a Biblical example. Satan was willing to give the world over to Jesus in exchange for control over Jesus, but Jesus would not bow down to satan. When satan could not gain control over Jesus the only other option was for satan to kill Jesus. This is why a false prophet has to be someone who intentionally deceives people for his own gain. The Bible says even the demons believe. What makes satan so powerful is the fact that he knows the truth better then we do. In the end only God can judge between those who are evil and those who are good. Some of  the most evil men in the world have a deep understanding of the truth and are pastoring churches.

Evil gains strength the same way good does. If evil makes pride, passion or position too important then even evil even will become weakened and fail. An evil person and a good person thrive when they operate in secrecy. Jesus was perfect as the God man and often when He healed people he told them not to tell anyone. Jesus tells us to do our good deeds in secret. Evil done in secrecy is like a cancer growing inside a body in other words by the time you see symptoms many times it is too late because the damage has already been done. Good deeds done in secrecy protect us from becoming entangled by the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life. Maybe this is why the Bible talks about an unseen spiritual war taking place. Our immune system operates unseen and yet it keeps us alive. The Bible speaks of human beings walking in the spirit and therefore not only avoiding the lust of the flesh, but also becoming active participants in spiritual war. The sword of the spirit is truth (the word of God written on the tablets of our hearts). The reason evil exists is because good exists and the reason good exists is because evil exists. Opposing forces actually create the foundation for each other's existence.  

Here is a final example. If both a good and an evil person found out the they were going to die in 24 hours how would they handle this truth differently? A good person would love the people in their life as it was there last day on earth. If an evil person got this truth they would go out executing their power to carouse and live in licentiousness as the people did in the days of Noah. God did not design us to control each other, but an evil person uses slightly contaminated truth for the purpose of controlling people. Control is the opposite of love because control enslaves people using lies, while love frees people. Control takes (steals), but love gives. The person spending there last 24 hours carousing and living in licentiousness would have to control / hurt people in an attempt to satisfy his lusts. You cannot live a life attempting to control people without constantly lying or manipulating. This leads me to the original biblical definition of witchcraft being manipulation.

The definition of a curse is causing someone to believe a lie that eats them up alive. My dad was in the Vietnam war and he told me people with non-life-threatening  wounds would die of shock because they convinced themselves that they were going to die. Lies kill people or at the very least they destroy living people. A person unknowingly practicing witchcraft will cause people to believe lies that become a curse on that persons life. A true curse is a false view of ones-self that has a devastating impact. Remember when Jesus commended the little children and then said anyone who harms one of these little ones would be better off tyeing a millstone around their neck and casting themselves into the sea? Children are born innocent, at some point many children are caused to stumble by abusive parents who unknowingly cast a spell on them. The spell that may come from abusive parents is a child's poisonousness view of themselves. Jesus came to set the captives free with the truth. The cross was God's way of showing His love to the world and freeing them from the sin that cursed them.

Conclusion you cannot define whether a person is good or evil by the depth of truth they know. When the wrong person knows too much truth too soon they become some of the most dangerous people around. The Bible says that a bishop needs to be married and his family needs to be in willful submission to him before he can be a bishop. The Bible says that a person young in the faith cannot be a bishop. Some pastors are the equivalent to a 4 year old carrying around a machine gun. Sometimes when a pastor grows a church simply because he is well liked, funny or knows a lot of truth it is a bad sign. How is your pastor managing the truth? Is your pastor using a slightly altered version of the truth to keep an institution alive while the people go on spiritually anemic? Does your pastor manipulate people into serving the institution while neglecting their families? When you attend your church do you feel free or do you feel the weight of obligation being placed upon your shoulders? Remember love always frees people while control always takes from people.

Here is a blog article I wrote defining evil:
http://holytriage.info/index.php?/archives/418-Evil-Satan-Defined.html

How the world is like Disneyland?

- We pay a high price
- To find a fleeting emotional high
- We visit a fantasy land filled with artificial magic
- There is beautiful music and parades about meaninglessness
- As we walk down main street artificial snow machines spray us with bubbles that are not really snow
- We are corralled like crowds of cows through long lines for a 2 minute ride that in many cases is less then we imagined
- At the end of the day we are tired, sore and poor
- Nothing is real about the entire experience except for the smiles on our children's faces and the memory of us loving them which they will forever cherish

Why will I write this article? The truth is that I have been feeling miserable inside. I asked God to deliver me the truth and in return I have received this misery. I feel like I live both above this miserable reality and trapped inside it at the same time. People may think I am happy because of the smile on my face, but don't be deceived. Each day God is giving me a tour of a battlefield where people are dieing, the wounded lie suffering and a few heros share small victories about saving peoples lives. There are days where the truth feels like it is crushing my soul and sucking the life out of me. The only freedom the truth brings me is the fact that I will truly be free someday when I fully enter into the Kingdom of God. Today the church paints a mostly false picture of God's Kingdom that reminds me of Disneyland. Today I only experience a small part of God's Kingdom and am left with hunger pains.

It is no wonder that John the Baptist stood in a river wearing camel fur and eating locusts with honey. I have reached a point in my life where I see people running in circles trying to find there lives and losing them in the process. Like the smashing pumpkin song says "despite all my rage I'm still just a rat in a cage". Someday I will look back as a wise old man and see even more meaninglessness. What my true identity will amount to is who I was when I walked in the spirit. God is love we too equal the amount of true love we transmit. We all carry wounds that infect/plague our relationship with God and each other. We lose touch with who we are then sin results in the seperation these wounds create and that is why forgiveness and healing go hand and hand. God heal us all.

All we have been given is today. We are not supposed to worry, just do our best one day at a time and live in the moment (like I always say, but seldom do). In this moment I have two great kids and a great wife, a roof over my head, food and things are ok. I'm going to enjoy it because it's all I have. I can't live in this darkness anymore because it is torture. God is good He is not a villain. After all He's done for me and miracles He has shown me, I am still unbelieving sometimes and I can over complicate the truth. I will do my best today – I am enough, what I do and what I provide is enough - for me and for God and I will just live in that reality - not above, not below - just in it. If I don't let go of this fear, my sons will carry it as men. No one else can fix my misery - all I can do is give my life to God and let him lead and that brings me relief.

Well it is not like I am going to jump off a bridge or something like that. I will say this it does seem like I feel things more then a lot of people as in the fact that lately bad news hitting me much harder then usual. I feel a bit sarcastic right now. People who tell me to just be happy make me angry. I want to say GEE THANKS SO THE ANSWER TO MY PROBLEM IS JUST BE HAPPY AND STOP THINKING SO MUCH. I could go back into hiding to avoid hearing simple answers to complicated problems.

Was Jesus happy?

Were the prophets happy?

Is to be spiritually strong to be happy?

OR...... Does something happen as we spiritually mature? Do we become more sensitive? Do we start to see things we never noticed before? What is the cross that Jesus asks us to carry? Why in the beatitudes are so many negative emotions mentioned? Are happy people spiritual people or people in denial shutting out the pain of others?

You will have to excuse my tough questions.