34 Faculties of Mind--Choice

The last leg of our tour of and browse-about in the mind of the invisible self of the Godhead is choice. Choice is probably the single most critical faculty of mind in the Godhead. Choice makes God WHO He is! The person of the Godhead uses choice (or selectivity) to edit and define Himself. God also uses choice to edit the what, why, when, where, how, how much, etc. of His being and doing.

This power of choice in the Godhead comes down hard on the side of good as the absolute measure of all things, hard to the point of causing the Godhead some troublesome choices, such as how to navigate around the problems posed by not-good, hard to the point of requiring pure goodness of Himself and all He does.

The most fascinating question, of course, is why—why did the Godhead select for pure goodness as the salient virtue in life when there were so many alternatives from which to choose? I currently have no answer for that . . . but, for certain, I am eternally grateful that the Godhead did so. I shudder to think if God had not. It must have something to do with the totality of His knowing, something to do with adding all things up and weighing all things out and correctly summing the result up, sort of like a mathematical equation with only one correct set of answers and therefore guaranteeing that there are no, cannot be, other answers, not for that equation.

If so, that implies to me that choice as experienced in the Godhead is a faculty whose architecture is ultimately based on structurally sound principles, principles which, like in a building, dictate the absolute parameters for that building (or choice); principles without which the architecture would fail. So, to me, that means that in the Godhead, operations and products of choice must always be governed by undergirding restrictions, because God knows that for choice to stand, it must be built rightly.

What then can be said about the faculty of choice in the mind of the Godhead? We’ll start with the basics.

Faculty: Choice

Definition: N., the “power to choose, the voluntary act of selecting or separating from two or more things that which is preferred; or the determination of the mind in preferring one thing to another. The right or power of choosing.” (Webster’s) As a verb, “to choose (means) to exercise the power of choice, selection” (Webster’s). Note that choice is described as a power.

Operation: To choose. The ability to select through the faculty of choice; involving thinking and rethinking; the ability to rightly ascribe and prioritize value; individual choice/decision with internal or external result; right mind and right emotion.

Hebrew,V., bâchar (Strong’s #977) to “select;—acceptable, appoint, choose (choice). . .”

Greek, V., hairěŏmai (Strong’s #138) “to take for oneself; i.e. to prefer:--choose.”

For example: Isaiah 14:1a

“For the Lord will have mercy on Jacob, and will still choose (bâchar) Israel . . .”

Inserting a suitable word from definition:

“For the Lord will have mercy on Jacob, and will still select (bâchar) Israel . . .”

For example: 2 Thessalonians 2:13

“. . . because God from the beginning chose (hairěŏmai) you . . .”

Inserting a suitable word from definition:

“. . . because God from the beginning preferred (hairěŏmai) you . . .”

Product: Right decision, direction, preference. Virtue.

From this overview, it is easy to see that a big basic of the faculty of choice is that it is a power. And this basic has huge implications. It suggests that as a power, choice is like an engine of sorts, an engine that drives movement, arrests motion or sustains inertia. And it suggests a power-profile for choice as an engine:

First, choice is an engine of consequence. Choice matters. No matter how painful the truth is, it is the truth--choice is a power, in fact choice is power. Choice can make the world a better place or . . . a living hell. God chooses to influence the world for the better.

Second, choice is an engine of change. Choice exerts energy. For example, choice can enable or block change, or choice can perpetuate the status quo. The energy of God’s decisions fashions and refashions, it forms, sculpts all He touches.

Third, choice is an engine of control. Choice decides. It can take you places or keep you where you are. Choice determines outcome.

Fourth, choice is an engine of creativity or destruction. Choice can create or destroy. Consider how God is an expert at selection, bringing about precisely what He chooses. No matter how great or varied the range of possibilities, at any time He is able to identify the pertinent factors involved in and select the combination best suited to His excellent preference.

Fifth, choice is an engine of pattern. Put a bunch of choices together and you have a pattern of choice. There is a pattern to the choices made in the Godhead. Let’s consider some indicators of God’s choice-making pattern:

There’s His choice to exist in community.

His choice to co-operate in community.

His choice to communicate within community.

His choice to live in balance within community.

His choice to be reasonable, to be interactive, to defer to others, to respect others, to create, to command, to put forth an effort, to relate with self-control and self-restraint. His choice to help, adopt various helpful roles, to contribute, to understand, to care, to be involved, to love, to be orderly and dependable, to be present, to provide, to protect, to sacrifice for others.

His choices are patterned! They are patterned to be positive, enjoyable, desirable, delightful, interesting, reliable and valuable. . . to others first and then to Himself! They are patterned to be good!

Sixth, choice is an engine of good or evil. And so we are back to God’s choice of pure goodness for Himself and ultimately all creation. By choice God epitomizes pure goodness. No one forced Him to it. No one backed Him into a corner over this. He did it of His own free will. He chose pure goodness as His exclusive modus operandi. And He uses His power of choice to establish goodness, pure goodness, as the ultimate aim of all being, the ultimate aim of all doing, the ultimate reality. In fact, God so prefers good over evil that He routinely brings good out of evil. It’s a major practice of His. Here’s a great example from the life of Joseph of God’s preferred practice of bringing good out of evil.

Genesis 50:20

“But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive.”

So you see, dear reader, God is dedicated to good choices. God is not an irrational, self-absorbed, self-indulgent domineering tyrant. Not the Judeo Christian God! Nor is he indifferent and uncaring. These are profoundly important points. By choice God has chosen to be who He is, and if we can grasp it, who He is is the best thing that ever happened to us all.

To be continued . . .

33 Faculties of Mind—Intellect

Just a note: Sorry there were no new blog posts last week. We went out of town for over a week and I was leery of using wi-fi until I get some stuff off my computer and onto a flash drive. But now back to our tour.

Featured today on tour of the mind in the invisible self of God is the faculty of intellect.

The Godhead displays consummate intellect, consummate incorporation of all knowing—something we people find absolutely beyond our limited grasp. Not all the databases in the world can ever approach all-knowing. That means that part of our people-problem is that we haven’t even got a clue how much needs knowing! As character Tess Fontana—new head of Section 5 in the SyFy channel T.V. series Eureka, said of the recent arrival of a female organic computer, “she has answers to more questions than we know to ask.” And still not even this computer has all the answers.

Oh, this subject is impossible to talk about! First of all, people abhor not knowing. Second they abhor know-it-alls. Third it is absolutely terrifying to people when occasionally they do, even for a split-second, get a whiff of the raw possibilities included in perhaps knowing just a lot. It’s scary stuff, sends people running in the opposite direction. Too much information! Can’t process it. Too emotionally demanding. Hand-wringing abounds. Remember the movie A Beautiful Mind? I never saw it but I HEARD it was about a brilliant man suffering psychosis because of too much mental wattage so to speak.

Adam and Eve had limited intellect. Adam demonstrated his in poor judgment, Eve in vulnerability to deception. I’m like Eve—easily deceived, have to guard against it all the time. And I know of no human being capable of unlimited intellect, would think someone claiming unlimited intellect was intellect-impaired.

But this is a people-problem. The Godhead has no such problem.

So let’s look at ideal, unlimited intellect—intellect in the person of the Godhead.

Faculty: Intellect

Definition: N., the ability to perceive relations (Webster’s). N., as mental ability, the ability to think, reason, and understand (Encarta). N., As an intelligent person, a very intelligent and knowledgeable person (Encarta).

Hebrew, N., tâbûwn (Strong’s # 8394 from 995) “intelligent—discretion, reason, skillfulness, understanding, wisdom.”

Operation: To evaluate. The ability to combine (factor in) raw data with other elements of person such as personality, life, emotion and will through the faculty of intellect, involving association, formulation, value assessment, resolution, selection and conclusion. To understand. The grasping of the meaning of something. As intellectual ability, the ability to grasp the meaning of something.

For example: Job 12:13

“With Him are wisdom and strength, He has counsel and understanding (tâbûwn).”

Inserting a suitable word from definition:

“With Him are wisdom and strength, He has counsel and mental ability (tâbûwn).”

Product: Cognitive scope, knowing, insight, comprehension, creativity, orchestration, enterprise.

In short, the faculty of intellect in the Godhead involves 3 major considerations: composition, complexity and capacity. Therefore, to understand the intellect of God, questions must be asked and answered, such as what is the make-up of His thinking? What is the degree of difficulty involved in His thinking? And what are the height and breadth and depth of His knowing?

Measurement of these areas is best undertaken by examining results, meaning one can measure or appraise His required potential of intellect by examining His performance or product. What scale of potential does God’s performance, as we know it, usually indicate? We both can answer that, dear reader. Since any result of God’s initiative is best known for mega-scale, the scale of potential required is mega-scale potential, requiring unimaginable resources.

Or one can appraise His performance in terms of the ability and agility demonstrated in His thinking. Said otherwise, a review of the quality of hardware, software and database of His being is what we are doing when we examine His intellect—His drives, His programs, His memory. So we ask questions like . . .

What’s the megahertz of His processor (number of instructions/second)?

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/M/MHz.html

What’s His Ram—how many Terabytes of memory has He got?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terabyte

What’s His data width in bits?

I have no answer to these questions, attentive friend, because you lost me at megahertz. But I do know that neither mega, nor tera, nor bits even begin to be adequate terms to describe intellect in the Godhead and yet they are the largest incremental evaluative bases currently in use. And even if they are not, nothing else has, is or ever will be adequate to dimension the intellect of the Godhead.

Well, anyway, measure God on any or all of these things and we have, as far as I know, only one convincing method to describe His quality of intellect and that is through the mathematic impossibility of infinity contained in Calculus! And as far as Calculus goes, its doctrine insists that one can only approach infinity, one can never reach it, because, well, that’s what infinity is—infinite, unreachable.

In God we find this condition existing—we find the one true appearance, the one true expression of genuine infinity. In God we find expression of the truly infinite, of the all-powerful, of the eternal, of the all-encompassing and we find it in His intellect. In fact, when we meet Him in the Bible, we discover an intellect of such magnificent grandeur and proportion it virtually bursts off the page, leaving us gasping in wonder.

We people may be awed by many things, from the sublime to the ridiculous. We feel wonder when we view earth from space. We are dazzled by celebrities. We feel amazed when we view visions of the heavens relayed from the Hubble Satellite. We are fascinated by mindless twitter. We are astonished when we consider what-we-believe-to-be the unlimited dimensions of the cosmos, or whatever else may fill us with wonder and awe. But consideration of the infinite quality of His intellect almost paralyzes our brains. It is too much. And so we can miss the best. His infinite intellect, His massive intellect is truly wondrous! And the truth is that His intellect dwarfs all else by comparison.

To be continued . . .

32 Faculties of Mind—Memory

Today on tour of the mind in the invisible self of the Godhead we will browse memory.

Memory is a critical component of being in the Godhead. Without memory the persons of the Godhead would have no ongoing sense of person. As it is, the 3-persons of the Godhead know who they are and they remember it. They know truth and remember it. They understand all mysteries and remember them. Without memory, omniscience (all-knowing) would be impossible. Knowledge must be retained to be useful.

As with all faculties of the mind in the Godhead, memory is strictly edited. God is in conscious control of all his faculties, be it thinking, reasoning, memory, or yet-to-come intellect or choice.

The following is a practical description of the faculty of memory in the Godhead:

Faculty: Memory

Definition: N., the ability to remember or recall (Webster’s).

N., “the ability to retain knowledge—the ability of the mind . . . to retain learned information and knowledge of . . . events and experiences and to retrieve that information and knowledge. (A) stock of retained knowledge and experience. The knowledge or impression that somebody retains of a person, event, period, or subject.” (Encarta, 2009)

Operation: To remember. The ability to store or recall raw or complex data through the faculty of memory (i.e., to recall instructions, yoohoo! Adam and Eve!).

Hebrew, V., sâkar (Strong’s #2142) to “(make) mention (of), be mindful, recount, record, remember, make to be remembered, bring (call, come, keep, put) to (in) remembrance. . .”

For example: Isaiah 43:25

“I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake; And I will not remember (sâkar) your sins.”

Inserting a suitable substitute word from definition:

“I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake; And I will not be mindful of (sâkar) your sins.”

This verse is a perfect picture of God:

By saying I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions, God speaks of who He is—the only one who can erase wrongdoing.

And I will not remember your sins is a statement that speaks of how God edits His own memory.

Product: History, knowing, resource, background, precedent, recollection, relationship

To be continued . . .

31 Chashab & Yâkach

Thought and reason, Chashab & Yâkach, great ways to end the week last week AND great ways to launch the week this week!

Thought

Hebrew, V. châshab (Strong’s #2803). “( . . . from the mental effort) to think, regard, value, compute; make account of, conceive, consider, count . . . devise, esteem, , find out, forecast, hold, imagine, impute, invent, be like, mean, purpose, reckon . . . regard, think.”

Reason

Hebrew, V., yâkach (Strong’s #3198) to “argue . . . dispute . . . reason (together) . . .”

The self of the person of the Godhead begins to appear because of these ancient words. In fact, as we look through some of the verses from Blog #30 collected to demonstrate God’s thought processes and commitment to reason, His commitment to good reason stands out like a monument.

Evidence of thought and reasoning (with good as the standard of preference) in the Godhead:

Genesis 2:18: And the Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.” (NKJV)

And the Lord God means that God finds it reasonable to reveal and identify Himself as an authority figure and therefore as competent to reason rightly.

Said means, in this case, that God talks to Himself, converses with Himself when inwardly reasoning.

It is not good means that God is a thinking and reasoning being who discloses the results of His inner reasoning process in which He engaged to determine good from not good.

I will make him means that as a result of further thought and reasoning, God finds additional effort to be reasonable and good.

A helper comparable to him means that God reasoned through the qualities necessary for a good remedy before choosing.

Dear Reader! These are awesome things! The Lord our God holds Himself to the highest standard or reasonableness and thoughtfulness! He has a train of thought and a dedication to examining his thought and decision-making processes in a timely and thorough manner. When He comes to the table, He comes prepared.

Genesis 2:16-17: And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (NKJV)

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying means that God once again understands (finds it reasonable) the necessity of establishing credibility before proceeding to make commands.

of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat means God reasoned through in His inner self the nutritional (whether physical or soul) value of the various edibles in the garden He had created, determining their fitness for consumption for the man He had created to inhabit the garden, and found all good except one.

For in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die means that God reasoned that explaining himself was part of reasonable (understandable) communication with others and would be protective to the man, preventing him from poisoning himself in this case.

Look closely here, dear reader, we have a serious, caring, thoughtful, reasonable person behaving with innocent good intent here. He is sensitive to His position as He who started this whole shebang and is serious about being accountable for it. He is genuine and concerned in the extreme though he certainly could be justified in not understanding why someone would want to eat something poisonous anyway. He could even think that someone would be grateful to be warned of potential hazard so that someone could avoid the POTENTIAL HAZARD. (Sort of like from Lost in Space when the robot shouts “Warning, Will Robinson, warning! Danger, Will Robinson!” Such info can be a big help in the nick of time, don’t you think?)

Next.

Genesis 18:16-33:

Then the men rose from there and looked toward Sodom, and Abraham went with them to send them on the way. And the Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing, since Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? For I have known him, in order that he may command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice, that the Lord may bring to Abraham what He has spoken to him.”

Here we have God reasoning out loud to the men (probably angels) He is in company with. He is concerned about keeping His intentions hidden from Abraham and acknowledges how He has preferred Abraham and intends to honor him and others through him—a big deal! He acknowledges that He has already invested a lot of privileged information in Abraham and EXPLAINS why. Through Abraham a lot of others will have access to God’s privileged info that will prosper one-and-all in this huge, sprawling and unknown thing called life that He has started.

And the Lord said, “Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grave, I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry against it that has come to Me; and if not, I will know.”

In this passage, God reveals that He listens when people address Him. And He is caught by what they say. If what is said is true or could be true, if it is a threat to goodness, He shows that He will put it upon Himself to follow up and investigate (personally) to determine the truth and threat.

Then the men turned away from there and went toward Sodom, but Abraham still stood before the Lord. And Abraham came near and said, “Would You also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there were fifty righteous within the city; would You also destroy the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous that were in it? Far be it from You to do such a thing as this, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous should be as the wicked; far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”

Now, here, Abraham has the temerity to challenge the goodness of God. Giving Abraham due credit, he has noticed that God reasons through things all the time, so he chooses to challenge God through a reasoning process, challenging both His logic and His values.

So the Lord said, “If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city then I will spare all the place for their sakes.”

God exhibits great forbearance and responds reasonably to Abraham’s proposal.

Then Abraham answered and said, “Indeed now, I who am but dust and ashes have taken it upon myself to speak to the Lord: “Suppose there were five less than the fifty righteous; would You destroy all of the city for lack of five:”

Abraham senses how fortunate he is that this awesome being has not swatted him like a bothersome fly for importuning upon Him. Still he retains enough confidence in God that employing protests of unworthiness he ventures more challenge toward God.

So He said, “If I find there forty-five, I will not destroy it.”

With unflappable calm, God is readily agreeable. Abraham is emboldened.

And he spoke to Him yet again and said, “Suppose there should be forty found there?”

So He said, “I will not do it for the sake of forty.”

Then he said, “Let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak: “Suppose thirty should be found there?”

So He said, “I will not do it if I find thirty there.”

And he said, “Indeed now, I have taken it upon myself to speak to the Lord: Suppose twenty should be found there?”

So He said, “I will not destroy it for the sake of twenty.”

Then he said, “Let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak but once more; Suppose ten should be found there?”

And He said, “I will not destroy it for the sake of ten.” So the Lord went His way as soon as He had finished speaking with Abraham; and Abraham returned to his place. (NKJV)

Well, to be the Lord God of Everything, God was certainly easy-going with Abraham, don’t you think, reasonable reader?

Why was He like that? you wonder, dear reader. Because . . . because . . . God is a thinking and reasonable being TO THE CORE. And because Abraham was revealing how much he treasured the Lord God—His thinking and reasoning, His goodness, His merciful ways with people. Abraham thought a lot of God and God knew it.

Chashab & Yâkach—great words brought to us by our Great God.

To be continued . . .

30 Faculties of Mind—Reason

By now you must have realized from my last blog that God is the original big thinker! And if His capacity for all-knowing (because we have covered at length how His consciousness contains all knowledge, all-knowing, of all kind) is any indication, He is the biggest thinker ever. But His power of reason is proportionately huge, also.

That’s why our next selection to browse on tour of the mind in the invisible self of the Godhead is reason. Hearken up here, gentle reader, because reason is one of God’s principal ways of relating! And it is something he spends A LOT of time doing. He reasons with Himself (Genesis 2:18). He reasons out complex issues. He reasons with other members of the Godhead. He wants to reason with ME and YOU. Our Judeo-Christian God is a God of reason!

God endorses reasoning at every level.

He wants us to reason with each other, A LOT. And he wants us to reason the WAY He reasons—to know how He reasons, what He reasons, prefer His reasoning, seek His reasoning, know His reasoning, believe His reasoning and USE His reasoning. (By the way, the all-caps are more for me than you, gentle reader. I use them to blazon key words or phrases onto my memory. The strategy is really quite effective and so now I use the all-caps in my writing without even really realizing that I am using them!)

So what is so special about the word reason? Well, let’s see.

Faculty: Reason

Definition: N., “the ability to think, form judgments, draw conclusions, etc. Sound thought or judgment; good sense, normal mental powers; a sound mind, sanity” (Webster’s). General descriptions include a mental faculty or mental ability to meaningfully manipulate knowledge, specifically the knowledge of good and evil. N., the “power of orderly thought; the power of being able to think in a logical and rational manner. . . the ability to think clearly and coherently; . . . the ability to think logically(,) regarded as a basis for knowledge, as distinct from experience or emotions.” (Encarta Dictionary)

Operation: To reason. Hebrew, V., yâkach (Strong’s #3198) to “argue . . . dispute . . . reason (together) . . .”

The ability to process information through the mental faculty of reason, involving understanding/discernment/clarity/conscience.

V., to think in a logical way; instransitive verb to consider information and use it to reach a conclusion in a logical way; to persuade using rational argument; intransitive verb to try to persuade or influence somebody by means of rational argument; to resolve using rational thought; transitive verb to formulate or resolve something using rational means. (Encarta Dictionary)

There are numerous examples in both the Bible’s Old and New Testament that demonstrate God’s commitment to reasoning. To mention a few: God reasoned with Adam and Eve—giving them reasons for obeying His command not to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (Genesis 2:16-17). God accepted Abraham’s reasoning, reasoning advanced to the level of intercession, on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18:16-33). God reasoned with Moses, persuading him to reason with Pharaoh (Exodus 3:1-4:17). God reasoned with the Jews through the prophets, Yahweh’s “commissioned spokesmen” (1 Samuel 3:20, Spirit Filled Life Bible, Word Wealth: prophet, NKJV). God resisted installing kings for Israel, preferring they look to Him and His reasoning for their benefits (1 Samuel 10:17-27). God reasoned with Mary, Mother of Jesus (Luke 1:26-38). God reasoned with Joseph concerning Mary (Matthew 1:18-25) Jesus reasoned with Pharisees (Luke 6:1-11; Luke 11:37-54). Jesus reasoned with Sadducees (Matthew 16:1-12). Jesus reasoned with His disciples (Matthew 16:5-12). Jesus reasoned with one and all, becoming the ultimate man of reason, even the ultimate intercessor between God and man (Hebrews 7:25).

In all cases, information was exchanged, rational arguments advanced in persuasive manners, resolution of difficulties was pursued through rational thought and with rational means—just like straight out of the definitions for reason included in this blog. God in the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Testament reasoned with orderly thought, could always be found reasoning in an orderly manner, could always be found meaningfully manipulating knowledge, specifically the knowledge of good and evil. And can still be found thinking and reasoning this way. Thinking and reasoning are forever installed in God’s person.

For example: Isaiah 1:18a

“Come now, and let us reason ( yâkach) together” Says the Lord . . .”

And inserting other words from definition:

“Come now, and let us argue (debate logically, discuss, ponder something carefully)( yâkach) together” Says the Lord . . .”

Product: Reasoning, organization, explanations, persuasions, understanding, reconciliation, progress, morality, ethics, law, rule, order, truth, justice.

When done God’s way, thinking and reasoning are the most noble of processes!

To be continued . . .