Concerning "control":
God has called us to rule over that which He has given us, under Him, not to "conquer" and "control" the world, according to our "human nature," even doing so in His name
by
Dean Gotcher
"For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world." 1 John 2:16
We either control our self in order to do what we have been told and/or what is right or we control the environment so we can get and/or do what we want.
In some of my articles and in my public presentations I cover how our body naturally responds to the surrounding environment. Dopamine is a chemical, called a neurotransmitter, our body naturally produces to communicate the presence of something gratifying to us in the environment. While some things we "acquire," developing a "wanting" for, or a "taste" for, most things that we "want" or "desire" come naturally to us. In other words we don't have to persuade ourselves that we "want" it.
In brief, our nervous system is designed by God to tell us when something is painful or harmful to us in the environment or pleasurable (which could be harmful as well but we might not be able to tell for the 'moment,' our desire, engendered through the nervous system, telling us that it is "good"―why facts and truth have to be inculcated so that we don't have to "experience" everything for ourselves to find out if it is good for us or not and die in the process). In this way the environment influences our thoughts and actions. If the environment has an object which is pleasurable, though we are not "aware" (cognizant) of it as yet, by coming into contact with it through touch, taste, sight, smell, or sound, our nervous system conveys the information for pleasure to the brain. On the way to the brain this information is changed from an electrical impulse to a chemical messenger (a neurotransmitter) which is 'liberated' or 'emancipated' into a small gap between the nerves, called a synaptic gap.
Dopamine is the main neurotransmitter related to the "want" of pleasure (there are others, but it is the big one, associated with most if not all the others). It is what engenders a "wanting" for whatever it is in the environment that is gratifying to the body and mind. When dopamine is released in the brain's synaptic gaps we become aware that there is something in the environment that is pleasurable. This is simply the way the flesh functions, as God designed it, for our health. Without dopamine we have no means of pleasure in our lives (there is no way to "enjoy" God's creation sensually, the smell of fresh baked bread, the sunset, encouragement from other for doing "good").
The nature of our "flesh" is (after becoming aware that there is something of pleasure in the environment) to find the object of pleasure (the object which stimulated the "want," i.e. the "I have to have it or I'll just die"). Thus, with our "eyes," we look for the object of gratification (or if it is not present or we can't have it in the 'moment' of want, we imagine it, i.e. we image it in our "minds eyes"). When we 'discover' it we then set our body into motion to acquire it (to control it). In this way we can attain more dopamine emancipation, the object stimulating the nervous system to secrete into the synaptic gap the chemical our body naturally produces that is related to pleasure. The idea being, if I can control the object in the environment (or the environment which hold the object) I can have more dopamine emancipation, i.e. more pleasure, not only now but also in the future. This latter stage is the "pride of life," i.e. the "See what I have" we speak to ourselves and others, "control over" being understood. From childhood on we flaunt that which we "control," that which gives us pleasure (with the pleasure of control actually controlling us, occupying our thoughts and actions). This makes both capitalists (who control the environment to control capital, property being money, being stored up pleasure) and socialists (who control the environment to control people, people being money, being "in the 'moment'" pleasure) and everyone in between, guilty of sin. (As I will share later, God has called us to rule over that which He has given us, under His directing, not conquer, control, and consume it unto ourselves, for our own or the world's "good" pleasure.)
Thus we have a stimulus-response system within us (somewhat). Yet science has revealed that the information we receive from the environment, informing us of objects of pleasure and pain is preceded (by a nanosecond) by an awareness of such a sensation. In this way we are actually accountable for our thoughts and our actions. We are not robots. The stimulus-response theory, when applied to man, is not correct. Yet without it being "pushed," dialectic 'reasoning,' man's "natural inclination" to unite with, become at-one-with the world in pleasure, can not be accepted as the way to attain worldly peace and socialist harmony (materialism). What is lost in all of this is that man is made in the image of God, he is to evaluate what is good and evil according to God's Word, by His Spirit, and not according to his own flesh, which leads to sin and death.
The point being. Whoever controls the environment, to engender pleasure or restrain us from it, has an effect upon our lives. The engendering of pleasure is "positive" and the restraining of it is "negative" to our carnal minds. Yet the truth is, it is not we who "control" the environment for the access to pleasure. It is the environment which "controls" us. Thus it is our "human nature" to "lust" after the things of the world. Without "chastening," i.e. pain (physical, mental, or social) in our lives, restraining us from dopamine emancipation, we become like "drug addicts," doing whatever it takes to get pleasure, being "lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God." This is why God chastens those He loves. Without the chastening we simply remain controlled by the environment, by the world, with our "lusting" after the things of it, physically through our flesh, mentally through our eyes, and socially through the pride of life, with it controlling us, with us deceiving ourselves thinking that we control it, why pride leads to destruction and a haughty spirit leads to a mighty fall.
The 'purpose' of dialectic 'reasoning' is to "control" the environment to guarantee the emancipation of dopamine, i.e. pleasure, so as to "control," i.e. seduce, deceive, and manipulate "the people." In this case all of mankind, not just for a few. This is why democracy leads to tyranny, with it's intent being "good" (to natural man, pleasure is "good"), yet eventually, once restraint (the chastening from the Father, getting you off "the drug of pleasure") is removed, i.e. people are free to be "themselves." Without parental or Godly restraint they become unrestrainable (using brute force, i.e. in government using a police state to get their way), i.e. lawless, "lustful," consuming all that there is (lying, stealing, and killing) for their "good" pleasure. The dialectic ideology being, that if we can create an environment which "conditions" a person to consider his actions for pleasure in the "light" of others acquiring the same pleasure, then peace and harmony and affirmation will prevail. The nature of man's heart, being deceitful and wicked, just won't let this happen. Yet those of dialectic 'reasoning,' being deceived and wicked, see the heart of man (his "love" for other's―which is false love, the love being actually love for the pleasure, the dopamine emancipation, he receives from being around them, i.e. we don't love the people we love to hang around with, we love the dopamine emancipation they stimulate in us, why the preacher in Leviticus said "Vanity! Vanity! All is Vanity!) as being a tool for 'change,' a tool for "good."
The "Boston Tea Party" was not only about keep the British from making profit from selling tea, being addicted to controlling the colonists to acquire pleasure, it was to prevent the colonists from obtaining tea as well, thereby remaining subject to the environment, to British control through the control of tea, which stimulated dopamine emancipation, engendering man's slavery to pleasure, the same reason parents have to remove the object of gratification from the child (using pain, i.e. chastening them at times to get them off the drug, why God had to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt so that they could worship him, i.e. get them off the drug of pleasure, i.e. detoxify them) to teach him that right and wrong is not based upon "human nature," but upon a higher authority, i.e. upon them as parents and upon God.
Without the chastening, tyranny and despotism reigns. This is where we find our nation today, a people intoxicated with pleasure, like drug addicts, on the drug of pleasure following after anyone offering them the "drug" of pleasure. Whatever or whoever makes Americans "feel" good, or promises a life of "pleasure" for them (and others nations as well) gives them pleasure (parents take pleasure in giving their children things to "enjoy") and therefore are "good." Thus we have a culture that "glazes over," gives you that "deer in the headlight look," when you tell them the truth, warning them of where the agents of 'change,' the drug pushers of pleasure, are taking them (that is to slavery, subject to pleasures they control, i.e. that control them, and therefore can dispense according to their "felt" needs, according to their "lust" for pleasure, i.e. initiating and sustaining their "lust" for power through "the peoples" "lust" for pleasure). When this happens, you are no longer worth listening to, you are being "negative," (removing their pleasure, from their drugs or their source from which they to attain them―consensus means a room full of people collectively on a drug, i.e. hooked on "group approval," the "approval of men"). Being no longer "positive," i.e. not giving them pleasure (offering them drugs), not making them "feel good" or giving them the hope of "feeling good," you become "the enemy" or a "potential enemy," a resister to 'change,' a restrainer of pleasure. Only God, who is spirit and not flesh, is good. Without Him and His restraint, all we have is the life of a drug addict, a life "lusting" after pleasure, a life leading to eternal death, the flesh dying once, the soul forever.
God told Adam to "rule." He told Cain that if he did not repent, he would "rule" over sin. He tells fathers and ministers to "rule" over their homes well, under Him, under His authority. We are to rule over that which God gives us (which means we have to let God rule over us, direct our steps: "O LORD, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps." Jeremiah 10:23). Otherwise we end up being controlled by that which we think we control (or "want" to control). Like David, sending for Bathsheba, it was not enough to get dopamine emancipation from the first encounter, seeing her. He had to "have" her to get more, he became like a drug addict, controlling the situation, controlling the environment, taking from and killing anyone who got in his way to initiate and sustain pleasure (with the situation, the environment therefore controlling him). In his response (after getting caught), "It is against thee and thee along that I sinned," speaking to God, he acknowledged that the sin was his rejection of ruling, under God, it was his turning to "controlling" the environment, according to his "human nature," "lusting" after the things of this world, "lusting" for dopamine emancipation, chasing after pleasure, physically, mentally, and socially, letting his carnal nature (to be at-one-with the world in pleasure) control him, that was the sin. By repenting before God and God alone, David refused to remain subject to dialectic 'reasoning,' 'justifying' himself before men, i.e. "Boys will be boys," i.e. living and walking upon the pathway of pleasure which leads to eternal death. There is a way, a pathway, which seems to be "good" to man (a pathway of pleasure). But at the end of that pathway of pleasure, lies eternal death.
All those who seek to control the world, even in the name of the Lord, fall into this dialectic trap, the trickery of the devil, making man like God by making God like man, subject to and therefore controlled by the pleasures of his creation, subject to the pleasures of the world created in the image of man, "lusting" after pleasure (Immanuel Kant, in Critique of Pure Reason, a major work which became the basis for Hegel, Marx, Freud, etc. "logic,", placed man's hope in pleasure, i.e. in man's sensuousness, not in God, in His righteousness). Those who seek the kingdom of God will be persecuted by (suffer at the hands of) the world. God has not called man to taking control over the the world "for him," but instead to rule over that which he has given him, God having providing him his daily bread he is to "live by every word which proceedeth from God," doing His will instead. "And thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or not. And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live." Deuteronomy 8:2, 3
"Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness sake: for theirs is the kingdom of God." Matthew 5:10 If you are not preaching and teaching the righteousness of God and the wickedness of man's heart, that man must 'repent' of his sins (his sin being his love of "human nature" over and against love of God), be 'redeemed' by the blood of God's only begotten son, Jesus Christ, and 'reconciled' to His Heavenly Father, by His righteousness and resurrection, to where you are persecuted by the world, rejected and despised by those "lusting" after pleasure (in love with "human nature"), then you are not seeking His kingdom, but rather creating "a kingdom of God" of your own making, for your own "good" pleasure. You are ashamed of the gospel because of the pleasures you will loose and the pain you will receive (from the world).
It is not that God is against pleasure. He created it. It is that we are not to think and act according to our "human nature" (the 'drive' and the 'purpose' for dialectic 'reasoning'), 'justifying' it over and against the righteousness of God, usurping the will of God, our Heavenly Father for the things of this world, including the approval of men. "Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand." Ephesians 6:11 We are not to run from the pain of rejection the world casts at us for preaching and teaching (inculcating) the truth. Nor are we to run after the pleasures it offers us if we remain silent to its sins (dialoguing our opinions instead). We are to stand in Christ, according to the Father's will, "enduring to the end."
"Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God." "For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds. Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin. And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth." Hebrews 12:1-10
"But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." James 1:14-15 The "church" has been caught up in this process, having turned away from the authority of God's Word, turning to the opinions of men instead, i.e. interpreting God's Word in the "light" of human 'reasoning,' so that man can "control" their own lives and the world, in pleasure, "in Him," i.e. those of dialectic 'reasoning' believing that a little flesh makes the gospel message go down easier.
May we let God rule in our lives, in His righteousness, so that we no longer let our "human nature" and the world control us in sin.
"For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables." 2 Timothy 4:3, 4
Facilitators of 'change,' i.e., psychologists, i.e., behavioral "scientists," i.e., "group psychotherapists," i.e., Marxists (Transformational Marxists)—all being the same in method or formula—are using the dialoguing of opinions to a consensus (affirmation) process, i.e., dialectic 'reasoning' ('reasoning' from/through the students "feelings" of the 'moment,' i.e., from/through their "lust" for pleasure and their hate of restraint, in the "light" of their desire for group approval, i.e., affirmation and fear of group rejection) in the "group grade," "safe zone/space/place," "Don't be negative, be positive," soviet style, brainwashing (washing the father's/Father's authority from the children's thoughts and actions, i.e., "theory and practice," negating their having a guilty conscience, which the father's/father's authority engenders, for doing wrong, disobeying, sinning in the process—called "the negation of negation" since the father's/Father's authority and the guilty conscience, being negative to the child's carnal nature, is negated in dialogue—in dialogue, opinion, and the consensus process there is no father's/Father's authority), inductive 'reasoning' ('reasoning' from/through the students "feelings," i.e., their natural inclination to "lust" after the carnal pleasures of the 'moment'—dopamine emancipation—which the world stimulates, i.e., their "self interest," i.e., their "sense experience," selecting "appropriate information"—excluding, ignoring, or resisting, i.e., rejecting any "inappropriate" information, i.e., established command, rule, fact, or truth that gets in the way of their desired outcome, i.e., pleasure—in determining right from wrong behavior), "Bloom's Taxonomy," "affective domain," French Revolution (Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité) classroom "environment" in order (as in "new" world order) to 'liberate' children from parental authority, i.e., from the father's/Father's authority system (the Patriarchal Paradigm)—seducing, deceiving, and manipulating them as chickens, rats, and dogs, i.e., treating them as natural resource ("human resource") in order to convert them into 'liberals,' socialists, globalists, so they, 'justifying' their "self" before one another, can do wrong, disobey, sin, i.e., "lust" with impunity.
"Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein. Also I set watchmen over you, saying, Hearken to the sound of the trumpet. But they said, We will not hearken." Jeremiah 6:16, 17
Home schooling material, co-ops, conferences, etc., are joining in the same praxis, fulfilling Immanuel Kant's as well as Georg Hegel's, Karl Marx's, and Sigmund Freud's agenda of using the pattern or method of Genesis 3:1-6, i.e., "self" 'justification,' i.e., dialectic (dialogue) 'reasoning," i.e., 'reasoning' from/through your "feelings," i.e., your carnal desires of the 'moment' which are being stimulated by the world (including your desire for approval from others, with them affirming your carnal nature) in order to negate Hebrews 12:5-11, i.e., the father's/Father's authority, i.e., having to humble, deny, die to, control, discipline your "self" in order to do the father's/Father's will, negating Romans 7:14-25, i.e., your having a guilty conscience when you do wrong, disobey, sin, thereby negating your having to repent before the father/Father for your doing wrong, disobedience, sins—which is the real agenda.
"And for this cause [because men, as "children of disobedience," 'justify' their "self," i.e., 'justify' their love of "self" and the world, i.e., their love of the carnal pleasures of the 'moment' (dopamine emancipation) which the world stimulates over and therefore against the Father's authority] God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie [that pleasure is the standard for "good" instead of doing the Father's will]: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth [in the Father and in His Son, Jesus Christ], but had pleasure in unrighteousness [in their "self" and the pleasures of the 'moment,' which the world stimulates]." 2 Thessalonians 2:11, 12
© Institution for Authority Research, Dean Gotcher 2012-2015, 2021