The Duplicity of Dust

Continuing on dust, if you look closely at dust roaming the air, you can notice that dust hairs never travel in any singular direction. You can hold your hand up to try and catch a piece, but once you make the move to snatch at one, you find it being very elusive to your hand. Even if you hold your hand still, the dust wanders, sometimes towards your hand or sometimes away from it. The dust is able to turn from its own good- the hand- and left to be wandering the air.

James 1: 6-8 says, “But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.”

We have a duplicitous nature, constantly led by a variety of desires dipped in good and evil motives. We struggle back and forth on this spectrum of good and evil. Back and forth between the two we go, and that is what makes us duplicitous.

Now, speaking in a religious context, the only way we can really know how to distinguish good and evil is because of the absolute morality of the 10 Commandments coming down. In Scripture, we see God send down a code of morality for the Israelites in the desert and then for years after, the Jews regard this as the Law. Usually, in our culture, we see people try to poke holes at the 10 Commandments, saying that it is virtually impossible to be a set of morality because it cannot be fulfilled. A good number of people use this as an argument for why Christianity is “faulty”, but usually when they do this, they take Jesus out of the picture. Jesus says He has come to fulfill the law. And then we see this concept put into understanding in Romans 7 where Paul basically says that the law only makes us conscious of sin, but it is up to the Spirit working in us to redeem our sinful nature. The absolute morality of the 10 Commandments has come down and placed a dividing line on the spectrum between good and evil. But we as a people just became conscious of what good and evil was then. We still struggled being dragged back and forth between the two.

So Jesus came and offered us a way to repent. Now the Greek word for repentance is metanoia, and it basically means after thought or to change one’s mind and as a result change one’s behavior. In Romans 7, Paul points at this change of mind behavior saying that it makes us conscious of sin. In verse 25 it says, “So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.” By having our mind repent and conform to what God deems as good and bad, we become integrated with direction. From there we want to move towards the good. But outside of God, our own mind becomes the judge of what is good and bad, with no conformity to any sort of foundation other than what society thinks. And even then, society itself struggles with what is good and bad. You see the battleground of this displayed all the time in politics. With God we are integrated with direction because we know what the good is, and by grace we pursue it instead of moving back and forth on the spectrum because we are pursuing our own self-perceived good.

Mary Wollstonecraft, a British writer, philosopher, and advocate for women’s rights in the 18^th century said this quote: “No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistake it for happiness, the good he seeks.” I find some truth in this. We are always pursuing our own good, but in doing so, we keep moving the dividing line between good and evil up and down the spectrum to conform to our own 10 Commandments. We always want to see ourselves in the best possible light, so why not conform to our own law which says we are always pursuing good? Basically the duality between these two positions (a mind conformed to our own law and a mind conformed to God’s law) is this: a purpose for ourselves to seek our own good vs. a purpose for God’s glory, which ultimately works for our good.

Proverbs 19:21 says, “Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.”

Notice the plural “plans” verses the singular “purpose.” Ravi Zecharias, a Christian evangelical apologist, says this: “What we need is for our diversity of desires to be unified with purpose.” We have different desires for what is good and we are dragged back and forth because of them. But these desires aren’t really unified under a true purpose. Our purpose is for our good, but our desires go every which way trying to pursue this purpose while the Lord defines for us in the Scripture what is good and gives us a true purpose, one which we can pursue with a singular direction. And this true purpose is given to us in Christ Jesus. Jesus pierces through our duplicity and calls us into a good life with Him.

Outside of Him there really is no purpose that can perfectly integrate all of our desires that are dragging us back and forth.

For instance, if we make ideals our purpose (ex: Purpose of life is love) outside of God, there is no way we can carry out these expressions to the fullest without violating another ideal. If we love too much we end up infringing on someone’s freedom by smothering him or her. Another example of if we love too much, we might end up not working within the parameters of justice.

But with the cross we see it perfectly integrate love, justice, liberty, etc. Out of perfect love, Christ died for us, setting us free from sin and paying the debt owed because of it.

Some make their purpose to be that there is no God. But this isn’t right because it further confuses the desires of men. This is because you have a number of paths you can take. One path is to substitute yourself as God, being your own flawed meaning to the universe. Another way you could go is to propose that life has no meaning, burdening yourself with the hopelessness of a purposeless existence. Or you could make people your salvation. There are too many ways to go if we adopt no God as our purpose!

A true purpose is that which we can pursue with a singular direction. A singular direction is the only way our desires can be perfectly unified, and a purpose should be able to encompass all of our desires. Otherwise it is not a fulfilling purpose. The example of this that is most alive in my life is this: when we have a multiplicity of desires and we can’t fit them under the umbrella of what this world has to offer, then my purpose is not the world but the Kingdom.

With God, we are integrated with a definite direction and purpose. It is as if God wants us to stand before Him as a being who is whole and not torn in every direction while pursuing his own good.

“Teach me your way, O Lord,

and I will walk in your truth;

give me an undivided heart,

that I may fear your name.”

-Psalm 86:11

In the next post, I want to offer Biblical examples of the duplicitous nature of man and how it is overcome through God.