Once, in giving a lecture to a group about dreams, a woman asked why she needed to bother with dreams when all she had to do was affirm her belief in Jesus Christ to be saved. I think that therein lies the problem with many “devout” Christians. During the years I was growing up as a Catholic (no longer a Catholic), I had the sense that I had an inside track to heaven. As long as I stayed a Catholic, attended the Catholic Mass regularly, and went to confession, I was saved. Evangelical Christians believe that once they affirm their belief in Jesus Christ they are saved. The need for good works is pushed into the background. Of course, there is considerable controversy over this issue: Are we are saved by faith alone or faith and good works?
I don’t want to go into all the
theological arguments concerning faith versus good works. I think Jesus made it
very clear in the New Testament that true faith is demonstrated through good
works. Without good works, we really don’t have the faith we profess. I don’t
think that faith is a one-time event. My sitting in church or participating in
a revival and declaring my acceptance of Jesus Christ does not give me a free pass
for the rest of my life.
I like to use the following analogy.
To get a license for operating a motor vehicle, I need to take a test, usually
consisting of a written part and a demonstration of my capability. Once I pass
the test and get my license, I can legally operate a motor vehicle on the
roads. However, that does not mean that I can forget about all the things I
learned and no longer have to pay attention to signs or focus on the traffic
around me. Every time I drive my car, I have to apply everything I learned to
avoid an accident.
I think the same reasoning applies
to our spiritual lives. We may have a conversion experience of some kind or
affirm our belief in Jesus Christ, but that does not mean we can go back to our
old ways or think it does not relate to how we live our lives going forward. Our
dreams tell us if we are actually leading a spiritual life; they remind us when
we are deviating from the path we claimed to have chosen. They provide daily
guidance as we deal with the challenges and temptations in our lives.
During my lifetime, I have known numerous
people who were evangelical Christians. Many were wonderful people. Unfortunately,
I found some to be extremely judgmental and poor examples of true followers of Christ.
They believed that they were saved because of their acceptance of Jesus Christ and
then proceeded to condemn anyone who disagreed with them. A few were driven by
hate and they saw God as a vengeful God who would punish their enemies. They
did not demonstrate the teachings of Jesus Christ. Now, I am not generalizing
this to include the group as a whole. I am simply pointing out that some were
guilty of being disingenuous and they would have benefitted greatly by paying
attention to their dreams. They were not demonstrating the belief in Jesus Christ
they claimed to have, but were oblivious of that fact.
I must confess that when I have seen
numbers in the news of the purported high percentage of evangelical Christians
who support Donald Trump I am perplexed. I don’t understand how avowed Christians
can support someone who disseminates hate, divisiveness, dishonesty, and
vindictiveness on a regular basis, and is rushing to execute as many of the federal
prisoners on death row as he can. And I am further dumbfounded by the “evangelical
Christians” who sport handguns and are ready and willing to shoot those
perceived as threats. I don’t see any sign of Christ in their attitudes and
behavior.
Recently, Donald Trump’s narcissism
has reached extreme levels, even for him. The glorifying of the self to the
exclusion of everyone and everything else is the opposite of the spirit of Christianity.
It is the mark of the Antichrist. I do not think Donald Trump is a healthy man,
psychologically. If I encountered someone like him in my daily life, I would
suggest he seek out a good therapist. While I can’t make that suggestion directly
to him, I can point out to others that they should recognize what he is by his
behavior. If you want to do something good for him, pray for him. I do not wish
that some evil would befall him, but I believe that his role in inciting his
supporters to storm the Capitol is grounds for removing him from office. The
last type of person I want as president is an extreme narcissist.
It really could not end any other
way for Trump. His business and political careers were built on cajoling and
bullying people to accept his reality. He is a great example of the power of
suggestion. As I have pointed out in my books and blog posts, one way to get
people to believe something is to repeat it often with conviction. Long before
the election occurred, he realized that mail-in ballots would favor the Democrats.
So he began a campaign of impugning them. If he won the election, he could say
he won in spite of them. If he lost the election, which he did, he could blame
the mail-in ballots. Now he could claim the election was stolen from him,
despite the fact that he voted using a mail-in ballot himself.
Trump’s continuous repetition of his
claims of fraud resonated with his base. They heard it so often that they
believed it must be true. It penetrated their subconscious to the point that
many became fanatical in their intent to right what they saw as a wrong. And,
of course, this all played out in the assault on the Capitol. This was nothing
less than the determined use of the power of repetition by a con man to bend a
large segment of the population to his will and save him from the humiliation
of a loss to Joe Biden. He cared nothing about the effect on this country and
our democracy; he only cared about what he thought was best for him—winning at
all costs.
Our dreams tell us if we are really
living the life we profess. We cannot affirm our belief in Jesus Christ as a
one-time event and then think we are living a spiritual life. We must
demonstrate it every day and continuously evaluate our beliefs and actions. Our
dreams help us do just that. A study of them may not be required for a
spiritual life, but they are a great source of aid and can greatly enhance our
lives.
Some rare individuals have been able
to maintain a continuous awareness of the presence of God without any
consideration of their dreams or even relying on periods of prayer. One that
comes to mind is Nicholas Herman of Lorraine, commonly known as Brother Lawrence.
He was a Lay Brother of the Carmelites in Paris in the seventieth century. The
small book The Practice of the Presence
of God describing how he accomplished this is still widely read today. It
is available on Amazon.com from a variety of publishers.
Unless you are able to demonstrate
the continuous presence of God in your life like a Brother Lawrence, I suggest
you begin to pay attention to your dreams. Our dreams are an important part of
our lives and can support our efforts to live spiritual lives. To ignore them
is to ignore a source of inspiration and guidance. Carl Jung, the eminent 20th
century psychiatrist, and many others recognized this. Jung believed that to
become whole we needed to integrate the unconscious and conscious parts of our
lives, a process he called individuation. Our dreams help us do that. This
enormous source of help is available every night when we reach REM sleep (dreams
may also occur during non-REM sleep), regardless of our level of education or station
in life.
The wise adviser that many seek is
there with you all the time. You don’t need to travel to Tibet to find a guru or
join some cult that claims to have the inside track to God. You need only begin
to start paying attention to the messages in your dreams. Wisdom and spiritual
progress comes through daily application.
