Black Hole Of The Soul

No one is perfect. No one is always right. Most will agree to that, until an imperfection or correction rears its head. Then we get defensive and sometimes self-righteous, but rarely do we admit fault. Why? Because we can’t see it.

Here’s something to grab a hold of. No man sees clearly. All have blindness to one degree or another. This blindness can be an overall dimness to truth and reality, or it can be spot specific, with perfect vision elsewhere.

Our being, our essence and existence has unseen flaws due to original sin. This is why God gave us Christ as an example, as a target to shoot for. Sin is literally defined as falling out of the way, as missing the mark, the way and the mark being the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Not all sins are premeditated acts of commission or omission. Everyone has dark corners and as such are unaware of them. We usually find the darkness by tripping over them.

I freely admit that I have black holes of the spirit. These are areas of the spirit that I haven’t seen although I look for and pray for their discovery daily. The black holes of the spirit consume right and wrong and spits out either a deviation of truth or no truth at all.

We all have black holes of the spirit. Jesus doesn’t. His word doesn’t. Therefore, our dependence to both must be absolute.

“Shew me thy ways, O Lord; teach me thy paths. Lead me in thy truth, and teach me: for thou art the God of my salvation; on thee do I wait all the day. Remember, O Lord, thy tender mercies and thy lovingkindnesses; for they have been ever of old. Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions: according to thy mercy remember thou me for thy goodness' sake, O Lord. Good and upright is the Lord: therefore will he teach sinners in the way. For thy name's sake, O Lord, pardon mine iniquity; for it is great.” (Psalm 25:4-8,11)

In the song, “Amazing Grace”, we sing that I was once blind but now I see. This sight is the awakening to the sin nature that is inherent to all man. This does not mean that we see all sins. To be frank, man couldn’t handle that ability of sight for that would require absolute righteous. The man of now can’t handle pure and absolute righteousness. It’s why no man has seen God and why Moses had to put a vail over his face after visiting God atop Mount Sinai.

“And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come nigh him…..And till Moses had done speaking with them, he put a vail on his face.” (Exodus 34:30,33)

All of mankind suffers from the effects of these black holes of the spirit and soul. This is not something we see or feel nor are we aware of its influences. What we see and how we interpret what we see is altered, re-calibrated, different than if not under its influences.

Now if we were without God, we all would be without hope, for the power of darkness would run roughshod over us.

But thank the Dear Lord for Divine Providence! “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)

Man suffers the effects of original sin. As a child of God, we are to spend our life on earth in the continuous process of repentance, which is a process of search and discovery, revelation and repentance. The devil is a liar and a deceiver. He doesn’t fight us toe to toe. He is subversive, undermining, and undercutting. He wins when we believe a lie and he’s good at that. These are our blind spots, our black holes.

“Nay, the bodily sense may furnish a still stronger illustration of the extent to which we are deluded in estimating the powers of the mind. If, at mid-day, we either look down to the ground, or on the surrounding objects which lie open to our view, we think ourselves endued with a very strong and piercing eyesight; but when we look up to the sun, and gaze at it unveiled, the sight which did excellently well for the earth is instantly so dazzled and confounded by the refulgence, as to oblige us to confess that our acuteness in discerning terrestrial objects is mere dimness when applied to the sun." 

"Thus too, it happens in estimating our spiritual qualities. So long as we do not look beyond the earth, we are quite pleased with our own righteousness, wisdom, and virtue; we address ourselves in the most flattering terms, and seem only less than demigods."

"But should we once begin to raise our thoughts to God, and reflect what kind of Being he is, and how absolute the perfection of that righteousness, and wisdom, and virtue, to which, as a standard, we are bound to be conformed, what formerly delighted us by its false show of righteousness will become polluted with the greatest iniquity; what strangely imposed upon us under the name of wisdom will disgust by its extreme folly; and what presented the appearance of virtuous energy will be condemned as the most miserable impotence. So far are those qualities in us, which seem most perfect, from corresponding to the divine purity.” (John Calvin/Institutes 1:1:2)

God is here, always here. The more we understand that and the more we depend upon Him, the more we are able to advance forward towards God in truth and righteousness.

Bill Hitchcock