"We Were Like Grasshoppers" Beyond the Controlling Fiction of Poor Self-Image

"There we saw the giants (the descendants of Anak came from the giants); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight."  Numbers 13:33

The people of Yahweh had a long history of victories.  They had witnessed the deliverance from Egypt in the first person.  They experienced Salvation History.  It had not been passed down to them as oral tradition. No one redacted or editorialized the events of powerful deliverance by Yahweh.  Yahweh's people knew his mighty hand at work on their behalf.

Crushing servitude had been their lot for over four hundred years.  They smarted under the lash of Pharoah and built mighty cities for the king-god of Egypt.  Blood and mud were the existential constant of their lives. Born as slaves to die as slaves occupied the deep structures of their collective cultural psyche.  There was no prophetic word of hope for them until the coming of  Moses the prophet-poet.

Through Moses those whose lives were mired in the swill and will of hardened taskmasters received salvation.  Their lives had been a living death.  They had no hope.  And into their dark abyss Yahweh sent his servant Moses to destroy the Egyptian Ma'at.  Ma'at was the symbol of balance and control for the Egyptians.  Ma'at represented their controlling ethos.

Yahweh executed his judgement upon the deities of the Egyptians with the current Pharaoh deity too. Yahweh took on all of them and wrenched their political-dictatorial power from their lifeless hands.  The might of the Pharaoh god was found to be finite and temporal.  At the sea the people of Yahweh saw the Pharaoh and his hand picked troops drowned by the everlasting flood.  Yahweh, however, sits enthroned upon the flood.

With this history etched upon their minds one would think that any future events and difficulties would pale in comparison.  Surely every future trial and circumstance would be seen through the veil of deliverance by Yahweh's power.

The spies who had been sent from the various tribes had come back from the promised land with a report that tore down the will of the people.  The report of the spies was a collective summons to fear and suspicion.  The report of the spies sent a shattering dread among the people.  A spiritual "Auto De Fe" was set ablaze among the people.  The statement "...we were like grasshoppers in our own sight..."  broke the faith of the body politic.

The people believed the 'lie' of their representatives.  After all, their chosen leaders had gone into the promised land and found an impossible foe.  The situation was hopeless.  The defeated spies added the words "...and so we were in their sight."

How do we overcome the power of the collective lie?  Well, as always Yahweh has those close to him who see the victory over the impossible situation by faith.  Joshua and Caleb stepped forth and strongly refuted the 'lie' of the grasshopper mentality.

Joshua and Caleb refuted the slanderous and outrageous lie of the mutilated ones.  The mutilated ones are those who have no word from God, but they love to shower their twisted and stunted human viewpoint upon the people of faith.  Has someone told you that you are a grasshopper?  If so deeply consider the source and get away from their self destructive and other destructive viewpoint.

But they say "We saw the giants..."  but they have failed to remember the God who delivers his people from every Ma'at. There is no control outside of Yahweh's hand.  I am asking all of God's people to once and for all get rid of the 'grasshopper' mindset.  Its time to serve the Lord of Grace and Love through the Iesous. Their is no greater power than God's.  He is Almighty.

Notice the broken give and take of transference and counter-transference in the verse.  Why are we always so willing to take on a view of ourselves that is not within the pages of the Word of God? Today you must begin the counter intuitive work of learning to see yourself in the image of the Iesous.  The grasshopper mind is the mind of the past mired down by weight of an enslaved self-image.  God had set his people free, and yet there were those who had to manufacture a poor self-image because they could not believe in Yahweh's salvation.

It is better to see ourselves as lacking rather than as having the power to live free.  It's better to create the fiction of bondage than to walk in the life that God has provided in Iesous.  A poor self -image is ok if it is reinforced by others equally so disposed.  We are inviting persons to come to the Iesous and give up the fiction of the Ma'at for the new life of God though the cross of his Son.

The Iesous has come to open the doors of eternal life to those who want a new life.  God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whosoever believes in Him would have eternal life.  Today, say yes to Iesous. God will give you a new self-image unencumbered by the Ma'at of the world.

God has come in the Iesous to overthrow the order of the world and its inherent system of order.  Indeed, the Ma'at of the world is dependent upon the ultimate order of Yahweh.  Therefore dependent order is arrogant order inasmuch as it is blind to its dependency upon the final order.

Ma'at is cosmic fiction in love with its reflection.  The spies who went into the promised land could not give up the Egyptian view of themselves.  They carried the Egyptian slave view of who they were into their new situation.  The old conquered the new within their new situation.  They could not see what God had done for them due to spiritual blindness.

Their blindness was contagious and filled with the pestilence of "grasshopper" beliefs.  The community suffered under their false testimony.  But God had two witnesses who stood up with him amidst the growing character assassination of God among the people.    

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