This essay continues a sequence. Read the previous one here.
Behold the fowls of the air:
for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns;
yet your heavenly Father feedeth them.
Are ye not much better than they?
Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?
And why take ye thought for raiment?
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow;
they toil not, neither do they spin:
And yet I say unto you,
That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven,
shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?
Therefore take no thought, saying,
What shall we eat? or,
What shall we drink? or,
Wherewithal shall we be clothed?
For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:
for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.
But seek ye first the kingdom of God,
and his righteousness;
and all these things shall be added unto you.
Take therefore no thought for the morrow:
for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.
— KJV, Matt 6:26-34
The self is not the brain. Believe in your self.
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In Part 1 of this essay, we highlighted that naturalness is at the heart of this passage and that for human beings this means obedience to the inner voice, which presupposes present-moment awareness.
The Unnatural Human
We are the only species that acts in a way that is disconsonant with its essential nature i.e. unnaturally. We have built a civilisation on principles (social, political, economic, etc.) that are not aligned with the Laws of Creation (ref. “Fall Down and Worship Me!“, “Blessed Are The Meek, Part 2“).
In order to succeed in such a system, human beings must adopt opinions and habits that are aligned with its fundamental premises i.e. that are equally wrong.
In such a scenario the Divine Laws cannot support our desired outcomes. We are all swimming against the tide. It is natural that the majority of people in such a system will not find it easy to secure food, clothing, and shelter, and will have to “take plenty of thought” lest they suffer.
Things may appear to “work” (at least for a minority/elite), but on the cosmic timescale they only do so for a very brief period, with great (and unnatural) efforts, and with increasingly destructive consequences for the non-human world. Eventually the harvest of so much bad seed leads to the fall of such civilisations.
This pattern has repeated itself several times throughout recorded human history.
Modern vs Natural Thinking
A modern opinion relevant to this discussion is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which is a popular perspective on the matter of food, clothing, and shelter. It is likely that most educated Christians find it sensible and useful i.e. they have not interrogated the spirituality, if any, of a theory that argues that human beings do, and should, “seek first physiological needs”.
Those who wish to follow Christ should experience some cognitive dissonance when they encounter such ideas. In this case, The Word appears to be proposing a very different hierarchy of needs (“seek ye first the Kingdom of God“). We already touched on this in “Command That These Stones Be Made Bread!“
“Taking thought for the morrow” is an equally questionable but much more fundamental element of human life.
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Why Worry, Exactly?
Firstly, intellectual calculation (thought) has become our default approach to confronting life, instead of listening to our spiritual inner voice first (ref. “Fall Down and Worship Me!“) and only afterwards leaving the implementation to the intellect. The intellect has become an independent decision-maker, instead of the servant of the spirit.
Secondly, our lifestyle has made distrust, fear, and worry basic ingredients of much of our thinking. This is the fallout of a core human trait: self-interest (ref. “We Don’t Understand Love“).
Self-interest, introduced by Lucifer (ref. “Fall Down and Worship Me!“), is the opposite of the selflessness demanded by The Word. But it has been successfully “marketed” as a useful and inescapable feature of civilisation; a key driver of “progress”, in fact.
Self-interest causes friction and destructive competition with our fellow-man and compounds our fears about the future.
Because our lifestyle is so detached from the selflessness demanded by The Word, Instructions like take no thought for the morrow seem very strange to us.
Act To Know
So it is only in the living of these Instructions (ref. “Faith Is A Halfway House“) that we can fully understand them i.e. that their “strangeness” disappears (ref. “Act To Experience To Know“).
Trying to live take no thought for the morrow would force us to confront many of our weaknesses e.g. inability to recognise the inner voice, lack of faith in The Word, habitual mental distraction, etc.
Living it would enable us to experience the insight and liberation that The Word offers, even amidst the seemingly inescapable demands of modern life and the confused tangle of contemporary opinions.
There are many popular practices that purport to develop the faculty of present-moment awareness, but what they teach is not what The Word is referring to. To avoid potential confusion we shall clarify this in the next (and concluding) instalment of this essay.
Today’s Resolution
- We will apply the courage that lies in the faith to live selflessly in a world designed for selfishness.
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