Akin to our parental or guardian based guidance that many of us are given from birth, to the very moment we head out into the big wide world - and onward to our eventual death, our subconscious psyche also has had a significant say in how we choose to approach every aspect of life; conspiracies and open-mindedness included.
When we lose the accompaniment of our parents, we substitute that loss directly by uptaking the guidance of our partner, ourselves and our direct surroundings, all of which are liable to manipulative techniques.
What [?] is the ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ ? …
“a psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending and identifying with the captors.”
As humans we’re subliminally programmed to follow a yoke – the staff of a Shepherd that guides the cattle: be that the yoke of God (of the Kingdom of Heaven) or be that the yoke of Satan, our worldly captor, (of the Kingdom of the World.)
“Woe to te shepherds who are destroying and scattering the sheep of My pasture!” declares the LORD.
Jeremiah 23:1
Literary Examples …
“Why, the Grim Reaper had put up his tent on our doorstep!”
A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams
This famous quote from main character, Blanche Dubois exposes the ways of the Devil, the presence of which is of a great prominence in the world that surrounds us.
The name of this famed 1940’s play by Tennessee Williams represents how life can be bought (materialistically) and be as a result, a one way ticket, a one way passage – to death, or to be lived out in love and compassion and be one towards God.
A Streetcar is generally a fixed one-way, public transportation. ‘Public’ is defined as the ‘generally ordinary people,’ or people as a ‘whole,’ a single form. God encourages the individual, whether we like it or not, we are an individual – no matter how twisted or inclined we are to the majority. Our relationship with him cannot be within the boundaries of an organisation or regiment, it is a free-spirited thing, untamed. We can, at any point get off that streetcar.
The Great Gatsby …
Recently, I studied Scott F. Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby,’ Gatsby is an illusive character, who pursues the love of a certain Daisy Buchanan, someone sucked into a world of material desire. Ironically her name is ‘Daisy’ perhaps referring to a weed, from the ‘Wheat and Tares’ Bible parable, therefore implying she was corrupted by desire, and Gatsby yearned for her to turn to him. She is subject to the ‘beast’ of a man, Tom Buchanan (Representing Lucifer?).
- Gatsby is rarely ever seen by anyone, his ‘parties’ are held loud and proud, but with no invites to anyone, people just turn up. Nick Carraway turns up with an invite, a conscientious young man who is an alien to the culture, as if he were born yesterday.
- While most people attended Gatsby’s party, none knew him – the party was ironically the great distraction from him, he was left, isolated, made a foreigner at his own venue, subjected to the whispering and rumour that demonized him. In some ways this helped Gatsby know exactly who he could trust, Nick Carraway: our narrator, the ‘son,’ whom expresses his interest in Gatsby, thus he gets a genuine invite – as he pursued not the wild party but the man behind it all. We see Nick being reflected in Gatsby and vice versa, both are alone, yet both yearn to gain something more. They are both not of the devilish world…
- It’s not that Gatsby couldn’t be with the people, it’s that the people couldn’t be with Gatsby. The essential message, if you demonize Gatsby as a recluse you have sorely misinterpreted the book.
- You’re punished for living in God’s name in vain, the parties are the delusion created for those who refuse to see.
And with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved. 11 For this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence (Gatsby’s parties?) so that they will believe what is false, 12 in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness.
2 Thessalonians 2:11
The ‘Valley of Ashes’ is one of the key points of symbolic imagery in the novella. However rich you are/poor you both go to the same place–they came from dust and they return to dust. Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust.
Gatsby’s bright car is contrasted strongly with the grey drabness of the ashes, he truly is representative of God.
From Dust to Dust
…19For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same. As one dies so dies the other; indeed, they all have the same breath and there is no advantage for man over beast, for all is vanity. 20All go to the same place. All came from the dust and all return to the dust. 21Who knows that the breath of man ascends upward and the breath of the beast descends downward to the earth?…Ecclesiastes 12:7
and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.
A Quora editorial explains this with a misguided scorn for their metaphorically secluded nature, that separates man and beast…
Nick is pretty much a loner, I think. He always talks with quite a remove about his own life. It’s like his own life matters very little. His own failed engagement is barely mentioned and his relationship with Jordan is not fleshed out at all. At the same time, when he views the people around him and the events as they unfold, you see he has a keen interest…
[I think Gatsby shows this too, he hosts parties without headlining himself to any great extent]
…(though he claims not to elicit confidences) and takes a moral tone. He is the lone moral voice, and we see how he sees Tom as a mere brute lacking in any redeeming qualities, how harshly he judges Daisy and how repulsed he is by the entire Myrtle affair from the beginning to the end. – Quora
Having not literally seen Gatsby, but instead subliminally understood him. Many people made the common mistake of…
… ‘I couldn’t feel, so (instead) I tried to touch.’ …
No one has ever seen God, but the one and only (be an individual, be yourself) Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.
No one has ever seen God. The One and Only Son– the One who is at the Father’s side– He has revealed Him.
‘The one and only’
In the image of God, he made his son, in the image of the son we must craft ourselves, so to see God, so to understand him – so to become the son, unified under the reverent message, so to revealed through the blessings of the word.
“Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.”
― Plato
It is, admittedly, a de-motivator; bearing a faith in something you barely understand, that is because the basis for that faith is in love and trust – both of which are based on taking a chance: will it be the power of love, or the love of power?…
When you first met your lover, did you not take a chance, a leap of faith to win them over?
Love and trust is putting yourself on the line for another, knowing that they have the capacity to damage you… or to emancipate you, but ‘indicators of interest,’ aka subliminal messages, give little hints, they give you an edge in your decision making, that’s the world we live in today – we must read between the lines.
Yes, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.
2 Timothy 3:12
You must push past comfort; worldly comforts, they make us ignorant, turtle-shelled, and wholeheartedly reclusive from God, Jesus suffered persecution all his life and died being punished for spreading love and the word of God, ironically this was in an era of a slave Empire, the Roman Empire, that dominated so many, the antichrist led no doubt.
The reality is, the world is the battle grounds of light and dark, it’s been said so many times, yet not many really realize it. We are our own personal Jesus, you cant just sing hymns and read out the word, you must completely bathe yourself in the word, you must become Jesus, as one.
“Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.”
Matthew 12:30
“The greatest victory in life is to rise above the material things that we once valued most.”
Muhammad Ali, aka Carson Clay
The Spearhead Journal 