Identity: Revision, Review, Re-purpose
My youngest daughter’s class is watching Schindler’s List as part of their senior literature class. She is not.
*spoiler alert*
When the one-armed man was shot on the street in full view of the work detail including children, she melted. With incredible (odd) visual imagery systems, she could not tolerate it and she visited it in her nightmares.
She’s been doing an alternate assignment. She has to look at different things surrounding the Holocaust and collect information to share with her instructor. Basically, it’s an unguided Internet information dumpster dive bounded only by open report to the instructor via frank discussion.
One of the things that interested her the most was the swastika. It was originally simply an old Indian or Hindu religious symbol. Clockwise rotation was associated with day and sun and light and good fortune; counterclockwise rotation was tied to night.
Many European cultures used a similar symbol the father of the gods or for the god of thunder. Indigenous cultures of North America also used a similar symbol with different meanings, including wandering clans, a spinning log important to healing, and an octopus that created the world.
All was good until the Nazi appropriation of the symbol. It became associated with racial purity and elimination of all things other than our race. As a result, most in the western world have argued for banning or eliminating it.
I wonder how often that happens to a soul. Abba creates a soul for a specific purpose, and that soul hums along until it comes to the attention of the enemy of soul. The enemy looks that soul up and down and begins spin doctoring the soul. He whispers little things that change the soul:
- You’re not good enough
- You don’t belong
- You’re not smart enough
- You can’t do this
- Abba didn’t real ask this of you
If the soul doesn’t hear, the enemy whispers to those around the soul:
- Really? He thinks he’s all that.
- She’s the most prideful thing you’ve ever seen.
- That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard.
- God would never work that way in this soul.
Those around the soul change what they say and how they act and reinforce ideas from the first bulleted list.
Eventually, the soul that Abba created for a good and right purpose is reworked and revisioned and revised into something, someone ingrown, twisted, and less than planned.
In the real world, the remedy for the swastika’s image was education. Many western countries successfully gave balanced options for freedom of expression. Many eastern countries readopted the swastika as a religious symbol critical to representing the philosophy guiding the country’s leadership.
In the spiritual world, what is the remedy for a soul?
We all need to know and understand who we are in the eyes of Abba. We need to study His Words and apply His Words to our hearts so we speak life to our souls and the souls of those around us.
What are some of the things Abba tells us?
We are written on His Palms.
“Zion said, ‘The Lord has abandoned me, the sovereign master has forgotten me.’
Can a woman forget her baby who nurses at her breast? Can she withhold compassion from the child she has borne? Even if mothers were to forget, I could never forget you!
Look, I have inscribed your name on my palms; your walls are constantly before me. (Isaiah 49:14–16, New English Translation)
No one can snatch us from His Hands.
My own sheep will hear my voice and I know each one, and they will follow me. I give to them the gift of eternal life and they will never be lost and no one has the power to snatch them out of my hands. My Father, who has given them to me as his gift, is the mightiest of all, and no one has the power to snatch them from my Father’s care. The Father and I are one.” (John 27:27–30, The Passion Translation)
Through His grace and our faith, He saves us and makes us with a set of planned uses.
For it’s by God’s grace that you have been saved. You receive it through faith. It was not our plan or our effort. It is God’s gift, pure and simple. You didn’t earn it, not one of us did, so don’t go around bragging that you must have done something amazing. For we are the product of His hand, heaven’s poetry etched on lives, created in the Anointed, Jesus, to accomplish the good works God arranged long ago. (Ephesians 2:8–10, The Voice)
He hides us and guards us.
Be wonderful with Your lovingkindness, O Savior of those taking refuge at Your right hand from those rising up against them.
Protect me like the pupil of the eye. Hide me in the shadow of Your wings… (Psalm 17:7–8, Tree of Life Version)
He will keep improving us.
And I am convinced and sure of this very thing, that He Who began a good work in you will continue until the day of Jesus Christ [right up to the time of His return], developing [that good work] and perfecting and bringing it to full completion in you. (Philippians 1:6, Amplified Bible, Classic Edition)
