Pathway of love - Fair and Just

Our spirit feeds its truth to our soul and our soul expresses that, whether from our human spirit with its mix of acquired truth and experience, or with our spirit joined by faith to God’s Spirit and infused with his love and compassion. Our body feeds its sense experiences to our soul and our soul expresses them. (Seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and feeling etc.). Proverbs 17:22 

Our spirit joined by faith to God’s Spirit bestows well-being to its soul (and body) in the embrace of God’s love. It can even rise above affliction to say ‘It is well with my soul’.

FAIR OR UNFAIR

The human spirit seeks to establish its own soul’s well being by gaining self-advantage and self-satisfaction and by contesting unfairness against itself. That is not all bad but it can lead to an overemphasis on self-sufficiency. The human spirit would grit its teeth on the following Scripture;

John 3:30 He must increase, but I must decrease.

The world would say that it is quite unfair to set a goal for anybody to decrease. But Paul did not see this as being unfair because his spirit joined to Holy Spirit transcended that negative emotion of unfairness and disadvantage. 

2 Corinthians 12:9 But he said to me, “ My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. 

Paul knew that God’s love is the truth that infuses God’s Spirit into our eternal spirit through Jesus, whereby we can say ‘It is well with my soul’. God’s love makes our soul feel cared for and carefree (Luke 6:23). 

JUST OR UNJUST

The world’s version of being fair gets confused with the real meaning of being just. The Bible does not say that God is ‘fair’ (ever! - MFL). It says that God is just, but to most people he seems to be not fair. God’s love for all of us, can seem unfair because we think some people don’t deserve it, including ourselves a lot of the time! But that love for ALL of us IS just 

The word for ‘just’ is the same as ‘righteous’ – the ‘right thing’. God’s love is God’s ‘right thing to do’ and he cannot do otherwise because he is love. To ‘not love’ for God would be ‘not right’ for God, ‘not just’. 

WIRED FOR ADVANTAGE 

Let us look at just one aspect of our body’s sense experience feeding our soul emotionally, and affecting our bodies physically. It is our brain. Our brain responds to life experiences that are perceived to be good or bad (tree of knowledge). The brain then produces hormones and neurotransmitters that cause our soul to express these good or bad experiences emotionally. These chemicals and hormones likewise have an effect on our body for good or for bad. 

Proverbs 17:22 A cheerful heart/spirit is good medicine, but a broken spirit saps a person’s strength

Our minds are not conscious of this, but our brain releases cortisol, the stress hormone, when we do not get a ‘fair go’ or are disadvantaged in any situation. It makes us alert, keeps us awake and self-confident. Our brain also releases serotonin, the mood elevator, when we do get a ‘fair go’ or are an advantage. It relaxes us and we become carefree and unstressed. So guess what we get set up for in a competitive world! The problem is that advantage is tentative so we stress to regain or maintain it – enter cortisol. We might blame the cortisol on a nasty world with lots of nasty people out to get us, but we were creatively wired for this arrangement for our human survival. Faith in God’s love for us in our spirit outworks the gracious balance of these hormones in our ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’ body and soul. 

THE BRAIN CHEMISTRY

Cortisol levels normally fluctuate in a daily rhythm, but we need our adrenals to produce more cortisol in order to stay alert and at ‘high revs’ in response to stress, and not be disadvantaged. But we also need our cortisol levels to normalize ASAP following a stressful event. Unfortunately in our current high-stress culture, the stress response can get activated so often that the body does not always have a chance to return to normal. This can lead to an imbalance of circulating cortisol which potentially affects our health and well being. It adversely affects our blood pressure, our immune response, blood sugar levels, heart and circulation, sleep, anti inflammatory response, and the increase of visceral fat deposits.

Serotonin has been proven to affect mood and enhance positive social behavior, help digestion, promote sleep and memory function, and combat stress and depression (the ‘downward spiral’). Serotonin levels can be optimized not only through medication, but also physically through diet and exercise and light and spaciousness. But the best way is for it to be optimized emotionally through genuine care and comfort, so that a ‘carefree/cared for loop’ is activated – the ‘well with my soul’ state of being. That is God’s love infusing our spirit.

It is all about how much am I being conscious of God’s love for me. It is not ‘am I rid of all my weaknesses’? Or have all the hardships ceased, and has this world started being ‘fair’ to me?

THE JUST WAY

We have to align ourselves with the real and objective ‘right thing’ of God and not our subjective ‘fair thing’ of our human spiritual instinct. 

THE HEALING OUTCOME

It doesn’t matter how old we are, the right thing of God’s love and compassion restores the years. We have to get our spirit infused with the Spirit of God to set our minds and hearts and bodies in the harmony and blessing of God’s good love towards us.