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The Neglected Spiritual Dimension To Bible Interpretation Every Christian, simply by being a child of God, has access to truths that even great theologians might have missed. Part 3 of a Series About How to Avoid Misinterpreting the Bible Let’s recap: we are exploring matters that are vital to all Christians, and easily understood by all. Even the newest Christian is engaged in the pursuit of biblical truth. We all use hermeneutics (methods of interpreting the Bible) even though most of us never use the word. The emphasis in most Bible schools and seminaries tends to be on teaching methods of interpreting the Word that anyone can use, regardless of whether the person has any spiritual connection to God or is even pagan or atheistic. This is no criticism of theological institutions. The techniques taught are important and could be called basic or rational hermeneutics. We simply need to understand that there is more to Bible interpretation than this. As children, we learned to read. This has proved a most valuable skill that we continually draw upon when studying Scripture. Some of us learned to read in a Christian school. Most of us learned in secular schools. It makes no difference, because an ability to read has nothing to do with one’s relationship with God. What we could call basic hermeneutics is like that. It could be taught just as effectively in a secular college as in a theological institution. It’s a valuable skill that we should be using all the time when studying the Bible. But just as one can read the Bible well, without truly understanding it, so one can skillfully employ basic hermeneutics and not understand the spiritual truths of the Bible. The danger is that the more highly trained someone is, the more he might fool himself into thinking he understands a Scripture, when he is actually completely missing or misunderstanding much of the divine message. No matter how great his intellect, when a non-Christian encounters spiritual truths, “ . . .  he can’t know them, because they are spiritually discerned .” (1 Corinthians 2:14). That sounds spooky. We who pride ourselves on our intellect can find it so offensive that we reject the possibility of there being things the finest human minds cannot grasp without a spiritual transformation. It almost takes a divine miracle just to gain the faintest inkling as to why understanding spiritual truth is beyond the grasp of the unaided human mind. What would it be like to experience the sensations a lizard feels when it detects a sexually desirable lizard or a delicious cockroach? No matter how much ingenious research we did, trying to figure out what it feels like to be a lizard would remain mostly guesswork and we’ll never know how off the mark our presumptions are. The only way to perceive things as a lizard does, is if, for a while at least, we had the mind of a lizard. And even if offered that opportunity, some of us would find the offer too scary to accept. This is like the impossibility we face in trying to understand spiritual truth. It is something so foreign to human experience that no matter how great our intelligence and how deeply we ponder and analyze it, we cannot perceive things as God perceives them without undergoing a transformation of mind-boggling proportions. The sheer impossibility is reflected in Paul’s almost nonsensical prayer about God’s love: Ephesians 3:14-19  . . . I bow my knees to the Father . . . that he would grant you . . . to know Christ’s love which surpasses knowledge  . . . Learning facts will never do. We cannot understand as God understands without a supernatural transference of God’s mind/nature to our mind. This life-changing experience does not come in a one-off explosive burst, wrecking every neural connection in our brain. It comes one staggering revelation a time throughout the life of everyone who is in intimate union with the divine. It is an on-going process that we can stop or hinder at any moment. This is why Peter urges Christians t o grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ ( 2 Peter 3:18 ). Paul, too, speaks of “ increasing in the knowledge of God ” ( Colossians 1:10 ) and tells his readers they “ put on the new man, who is being renewed [note the tense] in knowledge after the image of his Creator ( Colossians 3:10 ) . Here’s a fascinating promise: Isaiah 54:13 All your children will be taught by the Lord  . . . The promise is not merely that all will have access to Scripture. As important as access to the Bible is, it is like the excitement of being given a seat on a jumbo jet, only to discover that the plane has no pilot. As a telephone is dead unless someone speaks to us through it, so is Scripture, unless God speaks to us through it. Our great need is to be taught by the Lord, as the above Scripture promises. The Almighty usually does this through Scripture, but it is something he must do. If, rather than being taught by God, we are self-taught, we will inevitably miss vital spiritual truths, no matter how diligently we study the Bible. Proverbs 28:26 One who trusts in himself is a fool  . . . The same is true about looking to human teachers, rather than the Lord: Isaiah 2:22 Stop trusting in man, whose breath is in his nostrils  . . . Matthew 16:17 Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.  . . .” In the previous two webpages (which should be read first – please start here ) we began exploring the factors determining our receptivity to divine empowerment to discern spiritual truth. Having commenced this fascinating and critical subject, we now need to uncover still more spiritual factors affecting one’s ability to understand the Bible. Elsewhere on this vast website I have written much in which I needed to use Scripture to discern God’s heart on various subjects. Sometimes when writing on these matters I thought it helpful to explain various principles I had had to draw upon in order to have any chance of “properly handling the Word of Truth.” So although most of this series of webpages about Bible interpretation is new, there are occasional quotes or adaptations from portions of my other webpages, here compiled to bring together some of the many factors that affect our ability to discern spiritual truth in the Bible. The following section is one such instance. You Can Find Truths Missed by Theologians We mentioned earlier that the need for this series of webpages becomes frighteningly obvious when we consider the degree to which Christians differ on doctrine and Bible interpretation. What is so disturbing is that these matters divide not just new Christians or worldly Christians or uninformed Christians. We are tempted to think poorly of anyone who disagrees with us, but if we dare look with godly eyes we will find Christians worthy of our highest esteem passionately believing opposite things. We might not know who is wrong, but clearly some of them must be. They cannot all be right! This sends us crashing to the humbling – even scary – reality that whenever we seek to understand such topics we are daring to confront a matter on which numbers of truly great men and women of God have got it wrong.   It is tempting to think that if God allows this divergence of opinion among even the most spiritual and knowledgeable Christians on earth, it must be because the matter is unimportant. If this were so, however, it would become perhaps even more confusing. It would mean that so many fine Christians on  both  sides are wrong in thinking it is important.   If people more spiritual, knowledgeable, experienced and gifted than ourselves have somehow missed the truth, who are we to get it right? The thought seems enough to send us reeling into defeatism. We feel the same way when hearing the crushing news of a great Christian having a moral fall. If such a person could fall, what chance do we have? Nevertheless, there is one truth with the power to lift us out of defeatism: no matter how much Christians may differ in giftedness, causing some to seem superior to us, everyone without exception is equally dependent upon the grace of God for the understanding of spiritual truth and for every spiritual step we take. Some of us can leap higher than others but it makes no difference in a quest to reach the moon. To leave earth’s gravity, each of us, no matter how athletic or disabled, is equally dependent upon a power outside of us – a spacecraft. Likewise, in reaching heavenly truth, human advantages or disadvantages make little difference. All that matters is our willingness to yield to a power greater than any of us – the grace of God.   If anyone could be mistaken, it’s me. But if anyone can reveal the truth, it’s God. If it depended on us, we might have little hope, but since it depends on the grace of God, each of us has boundless reason for hope.   If we can stop putting our faith in our devotion, experience, Bible skills and human teachers, and place our faith solely in the Almighty’s power to override all our inadequacies and penetrate our dull minds with his truth, then we have mastered two key factors in receiving divine revelation: humility (“ He will guide the humble  . . .” –  Psalms 25:9 ), and placing all of our faith in the Almighty, none in our finite, easily deceived selves.   The obvious starting point for discovering God’s truth is, of course, a right relationship with God. The psalmist prayed for the miracle of supernatural insight into Scripture’s wonders ( Psalm 119:18 )  but we cannot expect divine answers while unrepentant sin hinders our relationship with God. “ If I cherished sin in my heart, the Lord wouldn’t have listened ” ( Psalm 66:18 ). “ But your iniquities have separated you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear ” ( Isaiah 59:2 ). Sin must be removed by us trusting in Jesus’ cleansing and by genuinely wanting that cleansing. We are genuine only to the extent that we passionately long for purity and for devoted obedience to our Lord.   Another essential for accurate Bible interpretation is to have such a driving passion to receive the truth from God that we rival the mother of the demonized child who kept refusing to be put off from her quest to receive from Jesus the longing of her heart. Our Lord “ is a rewarder of those who seek him ” ( Hebrews 11:6 ). Seeing Through God’s Eyes When Jesus said, “ Why are you fearful, O you of little faith ?” ( Matthew 8:26 ) did he roar the words with terrifying, spirit-withering fury? Did his eyes fill with tears or tender compassion? Could the disciples detect a wounded expression on his face or in his voice? Was there a twinkle in his eye or a faith-inspiring hint of a smile? The disciples often had enormous difficulty in understanding what Jesus was saying and yet they had access to invaluable non-verbal information that has been stripped from the accounts we are left with in Scripture. How much harder our task is! To fully understand the Bible we need information that only God has. Our one hope of regaining what is lost is to be so filled with the Spirit of God and walking so close to the Lord that we know his heart. Despite the priceless opportunity to read Jesus’ non-verbal signals, the disciples often got it wrong because they were not able to read Jesus’ mind. The ideal would be not just to read Christ’s mind but to open the Bible and read  with  Christ’s mind. Imagine being able to read the Gospels with Jesus’ understanding and insight into those events; feeling what he felt, seeing what he saw, and knowing what he knows. That would be the ultimate in knowing precisely what Jesus meant. This is no pipe dream: 1 Corinthians 2:16  “ For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he should instruct him ?” . . .  We feel like plunging into defeatism again. What chance has anyone with a three figure IQ to understand the infinite Mind? How can we, with eyes fogged by selfishness, prejudice, self-justification and impurity, see as God sees? There’s no possibility for those not spiritually connected to the Lord. Yet for us, the verse continues in the most thrilling, staggering manner:   But we have Christ’s mind.   Access to the mind of Christ is the right of everyone in genuine relationship with Christ. The outworking of this, however, is a progressive experience that requires our cooperation. This is why Paul had to urge Christians: Philippians 2:5   Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus  (KJV)   Had this been automatic for Christians, Paul would not have had to mention it. Again, he told Christians: Romans 12:2   Don’t be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind  . . .   And he reminded other Christians: Ephesians 4:12-23   ... were taught in him . . . that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind.   We have the mind of Christ to the extent that we have died to selfishness and let Christ live his life through us and think his thoughts through us. “ Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus ” refers not to academic knowledge but to a radically changed, otherworldly mindset even to the extreme of willingly submitting to voluntary suffering for the glory of God ( Philippians 2:5-8 , KJV). “ . . .  be transformed by the renewing of your mind ” is prefaced by, “ present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God ” ( Romans 12:1 ). This is worthy of careful reading: Ephesians 4:17-24   This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their hearts; who having become callous gave themselves up to lust, to work all uncleanness with greediness. But you did not learn Christ that way; if indeed you heard him, and were taught in him, even as truth is in Jesus: that you put away, as concerning your former way of life, the old man, that grows corrupt after the lusts of deceit; and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, who in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of truth.   The Bible is divinely designed to be understood only by people indwelt by the very Spirit who experiences the actual feelings and deepest secrets of God. Please read this prayerfully:   1 Corinthians 2:6-13  We speak wisdom, however, among those who are full grown; yet a wisdom not of this world, nor of the rulers of this world, who are coming to nothing. But we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the wisdom that has been hidden, which God foreordained before the worlds for our glory, which none of the rulers of this world has known. For had they known it, they wouldn’t have crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written, “Things which an eye didn’t see, and an ear didn’t hear, which didn’t enter into the heart of man, these God has prepared for those who love him.” But to us, God revealed them through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For who among men knows the things of a man, except the spirit of the man, which is in him? Even so, no one knows the things of God, except God’s Spirit. But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might know the things that were freely given to us by God. Which things also we speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual things.   Although every Christian has the Spirit of God, our ability to grasp biblical truth is proportional to our willingness to let the Spirit have his way in our thoughts and actions. Scripture provides a practical way of measuring how much the Spirit is illuminating our understanding:   Galatians 5:16   But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you won’t fulfill the lust of the flesh .   We are filled with the same Spirit who inspired Scripture, to the degree to which we are victorious over fleshly or selfish desires. Lack of temptation is  not  a measure of our walk with the Lord. What counts is not what assaults us, but whether we resist.   What hope have we of seeing as God sees if lust, bitterness, greed, envy or any other ungodly attitude clouds our eyes? How much we see as God sees depends on how much we yield to God’s longing to kill every ungodly attitude within us. Dying to self is far more exciting and fulfilling than we dare hope. There is a valuable link about this at the end of this series of webpages.   No matter how much we study the Bible, we cut ourselves off from biblical revelation to whatever extent that the Spirit of God is not having full sway in our lives.   We let the Spirit rule in our lives and understanding by, wherever there is conflict, trashing human wisdom and treasuring God’s wisdom; despising our own wishes and delighting in God’s will; killing ungodly desires and birthing godly ones. This is not attained by human effort. It is a divine miracle. Almighty God manifests his love, however, by not abusing his fearsome power by forcing godly attitudes upon us. Instead, the King of kings waits for our cooperation.   To Understand the Word of God We Must Understand the Heart of God   This section is adapted from a webpage of mine about the unforgivable sin.   Suppose a parent warns a child, ‘Disobey and I’ll kill you!’ The correct interpretation of those words depends entirely on the person’s character. It will mean radically different things if the parent is loving and gentle, with a sense of humor, or is harsh, or is quite capable of murder. To know for sure that we have correctly understood someone’s words, we must know that person exceptionally well.   To understand what God means in his Word, we must get to know God as deeply as we possibly can. We must know his heart and character and values. Related to this: a key way of knowing how someone will react in a new situation is to observe over a long period how he handles similar situations. So to understand how God will react to someone blaspheming the Spirit, let’s look at how he acted previously, after issuing other dire warnings: * The Law of God said no Moabite could ‘ enter into the Lord’s assembly; even to the tenth generation ’ ( Deuteronomy 23:3 ) and yet Ruth, David’s great-grandmother, was a Moabite and became God’s chosen ancestress of the Messiah. * God’s law said that everyone guilty of adultery must be put to death  ( Leviticus 20:10;   Deuteronomy 22:22 ;  John 8:5 ). David, the adulterer, repented and, despite God’s anger, he was not only allowed to live but to continue to reign as king with God’s full blessing ( 2 Samuel 12:13 ). * The prophet Micah prophesied in the days of King Hezekiah, saying, ‘ the Lord of Armies says: Zion shall be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of a forest’ Hezekiah sought the Lord, and God relented ( Jeremiah 26:18-19 ). * King Hezekiah was terminally ill. The great prophet Isaiah said, ‘ The Lord says, ‘Set your house in order, for you will die, and not live .’’ Hezekiah prayed and another prophecy hit the dust ( Isaiah 38:1-5 ). ‘ But whoever denies me before men, him I will also deny before my Father who is in heaven .’ ( Matthew 10:33 ). The same Greek work here translated “disowns” is used several times in the original Scriptures to describe what Peter did to Jesus and twice to describe what the Jews did to Jesus ( Acts 3:14-15 ) and yet full forgiveness was offered to them all ( John 21:17-19 ;  Acts 3:19 ). 1 Corinthians 6:9-10   Or don’t you know that the unrighteous will not inherit God’s Kingdom? Don’t be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor male prostitutes, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor extortionists, will inherit God’s Kingdom.   If we panic, however, it is because we have ripped such verses out of the Bible; reading them in isolation, without adequately considering the rest of Scripture. In this case, the answer is in the very next verse:   1 Corinthians 6:11   Such were some of you, but you were washed. But you were sanctified. But you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and in the Spirit of our God.   The importance of the context in which a verse appears is often emphasized. The latest example highlights the value of this. In the earlier examples, however, we found a key verse for understanding a Scripture in a quite different part of the Bible.   It makes no difference whether the interpretive key to a Scripture is in the next verse or a thousand verses away; a verse is taken out of context not only if surrounding verses are overlooked but whenever a passage is divorced from the full biblical revelation of God. Look at how Jesus responded to the devil’s attempt to tempt him by distorting Scripture ( Luke 4:9-12 ). Jesus did not search the Internet for the opinions of highly acclaimed theologians on that Scripture. Neither did he say, “Well, devil, if you look the preceding verse . . .” Or, “If you look at the historical context . . . And the ancient Hebrew means . . .” Jesus didn’t in the slightest analyze or argue about the Scripture the devil quoted. He merely quoted another Scripture that to him was indisputable and contrary to what the devil was implying. That was enough for Jesus. Furthermore, a verse is also taken out of context if it is interpreted as if it were spoken by someone of different character to that of the true God. The Lord is neither fickle, nor a liar. He sticks steadfastly to what  he  means; never to anyone’s misunderstanding of what he means. The only way to avoid misunderstanding God is to never underestimate his merciful, loving heart, and how an offender’s change of heart and faith in Christ’s sacrifice frees God to forgive as he longs to, and suddenly the impossible becomes possible. Of course, if a person does not respond the way God hopes, the dire statement remains in force. This overview helps us see the heart of God and know what he really means by harsh statements that seem to give no way out. Their very harshness is intended to move people to seek God so that he could relent.   Here’s a verse that seems to give no hope to anyone found guilty:   To understand what God means by, for example, an unpardonable sin, it is essential to interpret it in the light of God’s forgiving heart, and his ability to forgive through Christ,  and  his inability to forgive outside of faith in Christ. If, however, instead of reading the Bible in sync with God’s heart, we read it while letting ourselves be dominated by a condemning conscience or by fear that Jesus is not ‘ able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him ’ ( Hebrews 7:25 ) we will repeatedly get it wrong. Although the full revelation of Scripture helps us see the heart of God, there are spiritual and psychological factors that can hinder us. For example, feeling sure of God’s forgiving nature is particularly difficult for people who themselves are harsh and unforgiving. Sadly, it is also difficult for some people brought up by harsh, judgmental parents or suffering psychological afflictions such as Generalized Anxiety Disorder (free-floating anxiety can be misinterpreted as being unable to be freed from guilt), Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (which can cause a condemning conscience and/or uncontrollable, blasphemous thoughts), major depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or delusional disorder. And not everyone suffering from such an affliction has been diagnosed. Treating such illnesses and correcting spiritual problems will help people read the Bible in a way that is closer to how God intends it to be understood.   Our Frightening Capacity for Self-Delusion The Word of God often identifies a “hard heart” as the reason for people failing to perceive spiritual truth. This, along with its implications for Bible interpretation, is worth exploring. Since the findings are somewhat similar to what we have already discovered, however, I’ll place it in a separate webpage:   Bible Interpretation: The Heart of the Matter.  For those who wish to move on, I’ll just cite one of its conclusions: how much our eyes are filled with God’s tender compassion for those we are tempted to despise is an indication of how likely we are to see biblical truth through God’s eyes. If part of us craves assurance that we are not disobeying God, and part of us yearns to do something contrary to God’s will, we will be subjected to strong psychological pressures to interpret Scripture in a manner that assures us that we can go our own way without displeasing God. In an attempt to silence the screams of a nagging conscience, intelligent people concoct cunning and persuasive manipulations of truth to try to pervert Scripture into excusing their sin. So if, for example, you believe you are sentenced to lifelong sexual frustration and deprivation if Scripture says a certain practice is morally wrong, there are ready-made “clever” arguments waiting for us to be impressed by their logic and references to Greek/Hebrew, rather than believe what Scripture actually says. 2 Timothy 4:3   For the time will come when they will not listen to the sound doctrine, but, having itching ears, will heap up for themselves teachers after their own lusts. Without us realizing what is happening, our yearnings, fears, prejudices and presumptions can cry so loudly within us as to drown out the Spirit’s whispers. 2 Peter 3:16   . . . his [Paul’s] letters, speaking in them of these things. In those, there are some things that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unsettled twist, as they also do to the other Scriptures, to their own destruction. Truly, we need to pray: Psalms 139:23-24   Search me, God, and know my heart. Try me, and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me  . . . Our only hope is to be so aware of our potential for self-deception that we don’t trust our own perceptions and thinking processes, but instead put all our faith in God’s grace – his willingness to forgive and reveal truth to us, despite our unworthiness. To trust in our own intellect, our purity of motives, our faithfulness, or our ability to hear from God is like trusting a computer programmed to give the occasional wrong answer in an unpredictable and undetectable manner. By definition, no one knows when they are deluded. How vital it is that we take seriously this Scripture: Proverbs 3:5  Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and don’t lean on your own understanding . . . . Don’t be wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord, and depart from evil. And how important it is that this Scripture does not apply to us: Matthew 15:8   These people draw near to me with their mouth, and honor me with their lips; but their heart is far from me.   A Suicidal Date With Delusion We all have the tendency to explore the Bible, not so much to find the mind of God as to find proof texts of what we have already decided to be the answer. Far too often I come to an understanding through reading portions of the Bible and from then on I lose objectivity. No longer am I without bias and humbly open to whatever my Lord may reveal. Instead, I absorb Scripture through the filter of what might be a too hastily reached conclusion. Although barely aware of what I am doing, my mind is probably trying to make the rest of the Bible conform to my own belief, rather than honestly yielding to the full teaching of the Bible and letting Scripture shape my belief. We all tend to develop a theory, or a preference, or are handed a doctrine by someone we rightly respect. From then on – often without realizing it – we end up wrestling Scripture into submission, making it confirm our theory, rather than passively submitting to the Bible, freely allowing it to modify our theory. Unless we resist the urge to use the Bible to prove ourselves right, we will most likely end up – while barely aware of what is happening – twisting Scripture to suit our own purposes. To do so is to open the door to delusion. It has rightly been said that the Scriptures we most need are the ones we haven’t underlined in our Bibles. They are the parts most likely to kill our theories and threaten our narrow thinking. Our motive in searching the Scriptures should always be to boldly find God’s truth, no matter how much that truth clashes with our hopes, fears and presumptions. Since we all have blind spots that we are quite unaware of, we need to keep praying for an openness to any revelation that is truly from God that we might unknowingly reject because it “does not compute,” as it is incompatible with our current mindset. It is essential that we maintain a humble dependence upon the Holy Spirit’s illumination. We desperately need the grace of God to avoid reading his Word through glasses colored by our expectations, or pride in our human ability to interpret Scripture, or a longing for a soft life. We must delve not just into God’s writings, but into God’s heart. The Lord himself – not our interpretation of experience, nor our human interpretation of Scripture – must be our authority.   Much More It takes humility to remain open to the possibility that even though we have strong biblical support for a belief we hold dear, our view could still be distorted because we have not yet discovered the full truth. What if, for example, we consider ourselves more spiritual and more biblically correct that Christians who differ from us, and we have no idea that those we look down on have seen another aspect of biblical revelation that we have failed to grasp? As I have written elsewhere: One of the greatest dangers for us Bible lovers is not blatant error but oversimplification. Certain glorious truths shine so brightly that we let them blind us to other, equally vital, biblical truths. Liked chocolate-coated poison, oversimplification is a particularly sinister form of error. We come to trust oversimplification because in easy situations it works but just when we are most vulnerable, it lets us down. Even worse, we are then tempted to imagine it is God or his Word that has failed us, when the real cause is letting a shallow reading of the Bible entice us to jump to false conclusions. Half-truths are as exciting and addictive and deceptive and dangerous as the early stages of heroin addiction. For so many of us, what we rather proudly think of as our theology or doctrine would better be called a set of presumptions. Here’s an ancient prayer of uncertain origin that stirs me deeply: From cowardice that shrinks from new truth, from laziness that is content with half-truth, from arrogance that thinks it knows all truth, O God of Truth, deliver us. To have that prayer answered is a huge step toward receiving divine revelation as we read the Word of God. Nevertheless, there are even more matters to be considered, so let’s proceed to the  next page.   How to Receive Spiritual Revelation

I’ve recently attempted something quite different to anything I’ve ever done before — crafting lyrics for a song to touch the hearts of people whose beliefs are utterly foreign to me. I refer to people spiritually confused by Woke and/or New Age beliefs. Their issues are probably foreign to you, too, but they need Jesus, of course, as much as any of us. I’m told the most appropriate music for the most needy audience is likely to be rap (again something foreign to my own tastes and experience). However, I have no musical ability, nor any way of getting an audience even if I did. Unless God raises up someone with the appropriate gifting it will never take off. If you would like to join me in prayer about this, I would be most appreciative. If you would like to see the lyrics as they currently stand, I will place them below. It’s called “Reality.” The repetition is deliberate. I’m sick of the game, Pretending I’m enough, Hiding my blame, Flouting my shame, Enslaved by people’s opinions. It’s time to end the insanity. What I call “my truth” is a mockery God, shock me with your truth. I need the view from eternity. Hit me with reality. Appalled at my flaws I look at the cross, Stunned at what you’ve done. I’m without excuse, You’re my only hope And you’re all I’ll ever need. I’m done with make-believe, Mesmerized by mirages, Pretending I’m a god When it’s obvious I’m not, Fleeing reality like a panic-crazed coward. Appalled at my flaws I look at the cross, Stunned at what you’ve done. I’m without excuse, You’re my only hope And you’re all I’ll ever need. Spiritual delusion won’t cut it; I’m desperate for reality. Almighty God, open my eyes like never before. Unchain me from beliefs that will never endure. I need what will last for all eternity. As I look to you, O Timeless One, You draw me back two thousand years. I gaze at the cross and begin to see The ultimate reality— Divine mystery embedded in human history. Never have such agony and purity met. I’m appalled, I’m enthralled, I’m numb, Overwhelmed by what you’ve done to pay my debt. No one but you could go to such extremes. You’re my only hope And you’re all I’ll ever need. I’ve had enough of telling myself I’m enough, Pathetically brainwashing myself in an attempt to avoid reality. I’m ending slavery to what people think of me. No more imprisoning my mind in a fantasy, Driven by a sick attempt to get people to like me. The more I ponder the cross, the more I find I’m leaving delusion behind And encountering the ultimate reality— Divine mystery embedded in human history. Never have such agony and purity met. I’m appalled, I’m enthralled, I’m numb, Overwhelmed by what you’ve done to pay my debt. No one but you could go to such extremes. You’re my only hope And you’re all I’ll ever need. If things grew so bleak That even the strongest quaked And whole nations despaired, They could still look to you and boldly declare, The darker it gets the better we see You’re our only hope And you’re all we’ll ever need. The darker it gets the better we see You’re our only hope And you’re all we’ll ever need.

Hello Grantley and I (vicki) are new to this, patience needed. Eye rolling at us is fine as long as you can do it as well as a teenager. Lol. God is amazing isn’t he. I am so often of out ideas, back against the wall… then God steps in and blows my mind away with his grace. Grantley is going to be posting here. If you know Grantley you know he loves to write. ☺️ Please watch this space as we share and update you with what God is doing. Please feel free to share your stories and what God is doing for you. Your Sister Vicki Morris

Just some of the New Testament’s Warnings To Christians About Being Deceived Matthew 7:15 Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves. Matthew 7:22-23 Many will tell me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name, in your name cast out demons, and in your name do many mighty works?’ Then I will tell them, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you who work iniquity.’ Matthew 16:6 Jesus said to them, “Take heed and beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” Matthew 24:4-5 Jesus answered them, “Be careful that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will lead many astray. Matthew 24:11 Many false prophets will arise, and will lead many astray. Matthew 24:24 For there will arise false christs, and false prophets, and they will show great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the chosen ones. Mark 12:38-40 In his teaching he said to them, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk in long robes, and to get greetings in the marketplaces, and the best seats in the synagogues, and the best places at feasts: those who devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense make long prayers. These will receive greater condemnation.” Luke 21:8 He said, “Watch out that you don’t get led astray, for many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am he,’ and, ‘The time is at hand.’ Therefore don’t follow them. Acts 20:29-31 For I know that after my departure, vicious wolves will enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Men will arise from among your own selves, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore watch. . . . Romans 16:17-18 Now I beg you, brothers, look out for those who are causing the divisions and occasions of stumbling, contrary to the doctrine which you learned, and turn away from them. For those who are such don’t serve our Lord, Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by their smooth and flattering speech, they deceive the hearts of the innocent. 1 Corinthians 3:18 Let no one deceive himself. . . . . 1 Corinthians 6:9  . . . Don’t be deceived. . . . 1 Corinthians 15:33 Don’t be deceived! . . . 2 Corinthians 11:3 But I am afraid that somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve in his craftiness, so your minds might be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. 2 Corinthians 11:13 For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as Christ’s apostles. Galatians 2:4 This was because of the false brothers secretly brought in, who stole in to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage; Galatians 1:7-8  . . . Only there are some who trouble you, and want to pervert the Good News of Christ. But even though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you any “good news” other than that which we preached to you, let him be cursed. Galatians 6:3 For if a man thinks himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. Galatians 6:7 Don’t be deceived . . . Ephesians 4:14 that we may no longer be children, tossed back and forth and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in craftiness, after the wiles of error; Ephesians 5:6 Let no one deceive you with empty words. . . . Colossians 2:4 Now this I say that no one may delude you with persuasiveness of speech. Colossians 2:8 Be careful that you don’t let anyone rob you through his philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the elements of the world, and not after Christ. 2 Timothy 2:17-18 and those words will consume like gangrene, of whom is Hymenaeus and Philetus; men who have erred concerning the truth, saying that the resurrection is already past, and overthrowing the faith of some. 2 Timothy 3:5-6 holding a form of godliness, but having denied its power. Turn away from these, also. For some of these are people who creep into houses, and take captive gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, 1 Timothy 4:1-2 But the Spirit says expressly that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons, through the hypocrisy of men who speak lies, branded in their own conscience as with a hot iron; 2 Timothy 4:3 For the time will come when they will not listen to the sound doctrine, but, having itching ears, . . . 2 Timothy 4:14-15 Alexander, the coppersmith, did much evil to me. The Lord will repay him according to his deeds, of whom you also must beware; for he greatly opposed our words. 2 Thessalonians 2:3 Let no one deceive you in any way. . . . Titus 1:10-11,16 For there are also many unruly men, vain talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, whose mouths must be stopped; men who overthrow whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for dishonest gain’s sake. They profess that they know God, but by their deeds they deny him, being abominable, disobedient, and unfit for any good work. Hebrews 3:13 but exhort one another day by day, so long as it is called “today”; lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. James 1:16 Don’t be deceived, my beloved brothers. James 1:22 But obey God’s word. Do not just listen to it. If you just listen to it, you fool yourselves. James 1:26 If anyone among you thinks himself to be religious while he doesn’t bridle his tongue, but deceives his heart, . . . 2 Peter 2:1-3 But false prophets also arose among the people, as false teachers will also be among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, denying even the Master who bought them, bringing on themselves swift destruction. Many will follow their immoral ways, and as a result, the way of the truth will be maligned. In covetousness they will exploit you with deceptive words: whose sentence now from of old doesn’t linger, and their destruction will not slumber. 2 Peter 2:18-19 For, uttering great swelling words of emptiness, they entice in the lusts of the flesh, by licentiousness, those who are indeed escaping from those who live in error; promising them liberty, while they themselves are bondservants of corruption; for a man is brought into bondage by whoever overcomes him. 1 John 1:8 Do we say, ‘We have no wrong ways’? Then we are fooling ourselves, and we do not know what is true. 1 John 3:7 Little children, let no one lead you astray. . . . 1 John 4:1 Beloved, don’t believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2 John 1:7 For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who don’t confess that Jesus Christ came in the flesh. . . . Jude 1:4 For there are certain men who crept in secretly, even those who were long ago written about for this condemnation: ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into indecency, and denying our only Master, God, and Lord, Jesus Christ. Jude 1:12-13 These are hidden rocky reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you, shepherds who without fear feed themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn leaves without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots; wild waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the blackness of darkness has been reserved forever. Warnings to Churches with Spiritually Dangerous People in Them: Revelation 2:14-16 But I have a few things against you, because you have there some who hold the teaching of Balaam . . . So you also have some who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans likewise . Repent therefore, or else I am coming to you quickly, and I will make war against them with the sword of my mouth. Revelation 2:20-21,24 But I have this against you, that you tolerate your woman, Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. She teaches and seduces my servants . . . I gave her time to repent, but she refuses . . . But to you I say, to the rest who are in Thyatira, as many as don’t have this teaching, who don’t know what some call ‘the deep things of Satan,’ to you I say, I am not putting any other burden on you. Related Pages Spiritual Deception The Spiritual Essentials for Accurate Bible Interpretation

Breaking Through Barriers To Creativity Barrier 1: Criticism No one who always surrenders to criticism will achieve anything significant for God. There is no type of music, for example, which appeals to every Christian. Suppose ninety-nine percent of people find your ministry atrocious. If your band played at an anti-nuclear rally, they wouldn’t know whether to ban the bomb or bomb the band. What should you do? Assuming they are reacting to your style, and not spurning spiritual truth, it would seem desirable to serenade the one percent when the others were out of earshot. That should make the unappreciative less inclined to consider a lynching. However, heaven does not measure a ministry by the number of people influenced. If you appeal only to a minority, it could well be a minority that is not being reached by other means. If so, the church would be poorer without your specialized ministry. Heaven’s approval outlasts earth’s applause. Barrier 2: Self-Doubt Even if I spent hours producing something I liked, I used to worry others wouldn’t like it. But that was five minutes ago. Now, I’m learning to trust God. Though bent by Adam’s crash and bashed by my own sin, God gave me my personality with its tastes, and for years I’ve been looking to him to mold me. So I believe that somewhere are people with cerebral plumbing like mine. They will appreciate my style and are most likely the ones God has called me to minister to. Should there be millions of them, I’ll be famous; if only a few, I’ll blend with the wallpaper. But it won’t affect God’s view of me. If popularity is a valid measure of success, our deserted Lord was a failure. Take my poetry (not everyone can take it). I actually found someone who likes it (and they have pretty good poems at pre-school these days). Audience-wise, that’s all I need to validate my ministry. What would it matter if everyone regarded my admirer and me as literary nincompoops? I’d rather win an illiterate to Christ than be hailed a genius. The person who appreciates my poetry is just as precious to God, just as worthy a recipient of ministry, as all the critics. ‘Experts’ regularly berate the simplicity of Fanny Crosby’s hymns. It is said she had the literary skill to silence her critics but she deliberately simplified her songs to meet more powerfully the needs of the distressed, the infirm and the poorly educated. That does not mean I can be lax. To limit oneself to a particular style can be very demanding but because Fanny considered it the most effective way to reach her target audience she strove for perfection within this framework. Since my actions reflect on my Creator and Redeemer, living below my best tarnishes God’s glory. In Christ, however, my best is powerful. Within the framework God sets me, my best, nothing more and nothing less, is just what the Father ordered. Too bad if people think I’d be a greater blessing selling inflatable dart-boards. If God has commissioned me, that’s all that matters. And if my poems make Shakespeare turn in his grave, I’ll assume he needs the exercise. If it turns the experts off their food, I’ll be the envy of the weight loss industry. You don’t like my humor either? It makes you want to what? Well, if it’s that bad, how come you’ve read so much? Oh. Well, how was I to know you would open the book at this very page? I was going to produce a book you couldn’t put down but I couldn’t figure out how to stop the superglue from setting until the critical moment. It’s a gift. Some people turn heads, I turn stomachs. Stomachs are important, too. Being a stomach specialist (I could market myself as the kingdom’s gastroenterologist) need not automatically disqualify my writing. I could still be in business if all humanity despised my writings. I know of at least one person soundly converted by a song he loathed. You needn’t concern yourself with such extremes, however. We are often so over-awed by God’s moral standards that we overlook other aspects of his nature. Our Lord is Creator as well as Savior, and the Maker of rainbows and nightingales didn’t suddenly lose his creative urge at the close of Day Six. God’s creativity is inexhaustible. And you were made for him. He longs to express his creativity through you. As an instrument and musician together make beautiful music, you and your Lord can unite to create exquisite beauty. What you can do together defies imagination. You make an awesome team. Yield to Christ, like a brush to the artist, and from your life will flow unearthly beauty. We are not responsible for the paucity of our talents. We are accountable, however, for the level of faithfulness with which we honor God with whatever we have. Could we have used our supposedly meager talent in a way that would have given God greater honor? That’s the burning issue, not whether we are as talented as Fred Nerk. In the parable of the talents, it was the servant given the least who buried his gift. (Matthew 25:14-18) Don’t imagine the master said, ‘That’s okay, son. I didn’t give you much anyhow. I know you’re incapable of anything. Come, enter into the joy of your lord.’ For me, a single sentence is a man-crushing python – a writhing anaconda to be wrestled into submission only through a virtual life-and-death struggle. It is not uncommon for me to spend an hour formulating one sentence. The reward for such care? A tangle of half-strangled sentences squirming for more attention. On rare moments my word-groping lurches beyond snail-pace to a teeth-rattling tortoise-trot. Moments later I hit the dust again, compelled to retrace my route on hands and knees, scouring the text for hours like a near-sighted Mr. Magoo, convinced I must have missed something in my inordinate haste. Words! There’s never one around when you need it. I try on a dozen for size, and even the best hangs off the cuff, is unfashionable and forever needs ironing. At school my English grades were so poor that I dropped the subject the first opportunity I had. There must be thousands of Christians who could have written my book with greater ease. But they didn’t. ‘You have a very readable style and some of your expressions and word usages are brilliant,’ wrote a magazine editor about an early draft of my book. I cherish that quote, but could any average person pour such torrents of prayer and effort and submission to God, year after year, into a project and the result be anything less than brilliant? A boy had such intellectual limitations that his parents feared he was subnormal. He later remarked that being a slow learner lengthened his thinking time and caused him to focus on simple things. His name: Albert Einstein. You will achieve as much as megastars who have twice your ability if you have twice their diligence. More importantly, your greater faithfulness will bring more glory to the Lord. It will thrill him. And your ministry in the world to come will far exceed the future ministry of a lax megastar. The most significant work is not the one displaying the highest skill, but the one most used of God. The Lord is not seeking people who astound audiences with their talent. He wants ministries who will leave people exclaiming, ‘That had to be God!’ Our inadequacies are often the perfect backdrop for displaying God’s splendor. (2 Corinthians 4:7) Our lack of ability will never thwart God – only our failure to draw upon his abilities. So if you feel too inadequate to minister effectively without miraculous intervention, I envy you. God’s strength is made perfect in such weakness. (2 Corinthians 12:9) You sound desperate enough to keep pounding heaven’s door until you receive an exceptional blessing. (Genesis 32:24-28; Matthew 15:21-28; Luke 5:18-26; 11:5-13; 18:1-7; John 16:24) And that blessing will overflow to those you touch. I often mourn the flaws in my writing, but the gray is tinged with gold. The hope of improvement dies only when we think our labors are satisfactory. Provided we don’t bow to discouragement, the more failings we see in our efforts, the higher our motivation to improve and the brighter our future. That sickening awareness of inadequacy can be turned around; hastening, rather than hindering, our future ministry. When you feel useless, picture a child, paintbrush in hand, gleaming with excitement. Enveloping her hand is the gentle hand of the world’s greatest artist. ‘And what shall we put in this corner?’ asks the man, as his skill and the girl’s imagination merge into one. See the artist’s smile and the child’s delight as together they create stunning beauty. Under God’s guiding hand, your possibilities are mind-boggling. No matter how you feel, you are the focus of God’s attention; doted on as though you are the only friend God has. If ever a man wanted to shower his bride with love, or his son with gifts, God longs to lavish you with his extravagance. Expect great things from God. Anything less is an insult to your almighty Savior. With your Lord impossibilities are playthings. Let faith mushroom by seizing the fact that the Omnipotent Lord is powerful enough to use you – over-riding your every inadequacy – and loving enough to want to. And believe that though he may lovingly delay your mission, his timing is perfect. Everything God touches is destined for glory. Even now, you are God’s ‘filthy rags to heavenly riches’ success story. The Kingdom needs prayer warriors, not prayer worriers. No matter how much you cry, beg, and wish, you have not moved from superstition to authentic Christian prayer until you can thank God for the answer, knowing it is yours before you hold it in your hand. Faith is not thinking that God can; it is knowing that he will. (Mark 11:24; James 1:5-8) You will see it when you believe it. To follow in the footsteps of ‘the sweet psalmist of Israel’ (2 Samuel 23:1 b) we would need more than musical genius. If we added David’s extensive theological understanding and spiritual insight, we would still be hopelessly deficient. We would have to match his patient, forgiving spirit, (Eg 2 Samuel 16:6 ff) his humility, (Eg. Psalm 51:1-5) faith, (Eg. 2 Samuel 12:15-23) intense yearning for God, (Psalm 143:6) his desire for personal holiness (Psalm 139:23-24) and eagerness to obey the Lord. (1 Samuel 13:14). Even then, there would be a hollowness about our lyrics unless we shared David’s privations and exposure to danger. His sufferings lifted his songs from ‘contemporary’ to timeless. According to Paul, the ability to serve hurting humanity comes not from a textbook but from hardship. (2 Corinthians 1:3-6) Not even the Son of God could begin his high priestly duties until he had undergone temptations and sufferings. (Matthew 4:1-2; Hebrew 5:8-10) The principle was established long before Jesus’ birth: Levitical priests, though born for the ministry and surrounded by it all their lives, had to wait for their thirtieth birthday before entering the priesthood. (Numbers 4:3) And the principle is still in force: Scripture stipulates that church officers must not be new converts. (1 Timothy 3:6)

Truth: An Awesome Responsibility So great and perfect is our awesome God that we cannot comprehend how much he must lower himself to use the smartest, strongest and least sinful of us This brief web page is so solemn it might turn you off this entire web site, most of which sparkles with joy. Nevertheless . . . my heart cry is to know God so intimately and extensively that I not only be in love with my Lord, enjoying him and delighting in all his wonders, but that I live in holy fear; revering the consuming fire of the Almighty, before whom all things lie naked and exposed. Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. We all stumble in many ways . . . James 3:1-2 My privileged but grave responsibility is to make my writings as much of God as I possibly can. All of us know, however, that if infallibility were ever to touch a member of humanity, it would be a frustratingly fleeting encounter. And to fallibility, each of us must add serious limits in knowledge and understanding. Even writers of not some mere spiritual masterpiece but the very Word of God freely confessed that God’s “knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain” (Psalm 139:6) , that they know only “in part” (1 Corinthians 13:12) , and that “as the heavens are higher than the earth,” so are God’s ways and thoughts higher than theirs (Isaiah 55:9) . My heart aches that NetBurst.Net be exclusively God’s website, sparkling with divine perfection, unstained by human failings, half-truths, false presumptions and inability to understand the infinite. Everything within me craves the beauty and security that would bring. But no such site exists. Over and over and over I have pleaded with God to let me be his dictating machine. I keep thinking that this would be the ultimate honor. To my never-ending amazement, however, the Lord keeps indicating that he has no interest in reducing anyone to that level. (For a brief but moving explanation, see Creativity .) The dilemma is that God chooses to use people, and as much as this is God’s glory, highlighting his stupendous love and humility, it is the crux of many challenges. I find myself spiritually obligated to ensure you are acutely aware of the hazards of the human element in any communication. It is my conviction that emphasizing my fallibility and ignorance is so important that I have placed a link to this page at the end of almost everything I have written. Straining to think of what would most stir readers’ curiosity, enticing them to visit this page, I chose to label the link My Shame . I dare believe that parts of this site are truly of God, but the gold is mixed with dross. The result is a glorious paradise strewn with landmines. This side of eternity, these two elements hide wherever a Christian steps. Our very survival hinges on a deep dependence upon the Holy Spirit. As much as I loathe the fact, you must read my writings with the same prayerful vigilance needed for anything else claiming to be from God. When at last my eyes are opened and I stand before my Judge, the risen Lord, I will fill with shame for every deficiency in this website. I take seriously my responsibility to present truth and I presume the accuracy of my teaching is somewhere within the current average for born again Christians. That means my writings are almost certainly riddled with imperfections. Except for the writings of Scripture, every preacher, teacher or writer faces a similar prospect. Jesus rightly put me in my place when he said: Matthew 23:8-10  But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have only one Master and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called ‘teacher,’ for you have one Teacher, the Christ. Ultimately, truth is a Person: the Lord Jesus Christ. All truth originates from him and is embodied in him. Unless we constantly seek him and cling to him, letting go of everything else, we will be deceived, regardless of whether, like the Pharisees of old, much truth is mixed with our deception. There might be a powerful anointing of God upon a sentence of mine. It could have come as a direct revelation from the throne of God. But that does not make it impossible for the next sentence to be straight from Satan. Remember Simon Peter: one moment commended for receiving a revelation from God, and soon after rebuked by Jesus with the stinging words, ‘Get behind me Satan’ (Matthew 16:17-23) . For the exalted Lord to so lower himself as to use my writings highlights the astounding grace of God. That he who is perfect would dare taint his reputation by using the imperfect is a mystery that leaves me awestruck. And yet our Lord’s stupendous love moves him to want to use each of us. So for the Lord to powerfully use these web pages proves the magnitude of God’s mercy, not the accuracy of my writings. No matter how authoritative I sound and how many Scriptures I use, and no matter how much I yearn and pray and strive for divine revelation and inspiration, let nothing lull you into assuming that everything I write is of God. Neither assume your ability to instantly discern truth is much better. I will be judged for any error I live or propagate and for every time I settle for a half-truth or allow my thinking to be unconsciously tainted by the world’s brainwashing. Nevertheless, you have access to the Word of God and the Spirit of God, so you must share responsibility if you choose to follow someone’s error, rather than seriously consult the Spirit and the Word. My Shame My biggest source of shame is how far short of my own words I fall in my everyday living. I hope I love and fear God too much to live in deliberate sin. I try hard because nothing is more important than daily living revealed truth. I dare not add to my shortcomings, however, by implying I have yet traveled nearly as far as I can see. I pray you do much better. No one knowing the real me is very impressed, but I fear the inflated guesses of anyone using my writings to imagine what I am really like. The last thing the world needs is yet another idol, no matter how puny. Were I in the top 1% of Christians, I would only be one of millions, since estimates suggest there are hundreds of millions of Christians. As it is, I might not scrape into the top 50%. Famous Christians, like the rest of God’s people, are usually wonderful people. The Christian superstar mentality, however, does enormous damage to the body of Christ. A few are so exalted as to endanger their spiritual walk, while the average Christian is made to feel inferior. The problem with the limelight is that it puts others in the dark. Don’t fall for that trap. Either God could move the world through YOU or he isn’t God! To focus on any human would be a tragedy. Keep looking past the vessel to Jesus. He alone is the rock, alongside whom everyone else is shifting sand. Jesus said the Holy Spirit will lead us into all truth (John 16:13) . I must not be content with ignorance but keep pursuing more truth. Nevertheless, the Lord says in his Word that we currently only “know in part” (1 Corinthians 13:9) , that “the secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us” (Deuteronomy 29:29) and the psalmist sang, “I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me,” (Psalm 131:1) . We are not called to be know-alls but to know the One who knows all. ‘So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ”We are unworthy servants . . .” ’ (Luke 17:10) No Christian is Exempt from the Danger of Deception The danger of Christians falling into spiritual deception is emphasized with astounding frequency in the Bible. To let the seriousness of this impact you, note the sheer volume of these warnings, even if you let your eyes whiz over these Scriptures for only a couple of seconds: New Testament Warnings to Christians About Being Deceived . Reminder If you agree with something in these web pages, make sure that it is because the Spirit of God agrees with it. Likewise, if you disagree with anything written, ensure it is because the Spirit disagrees. The issue is not whether Scripture can be twisted to conform to what I write. I have already managed that. Nor is the issue whether what I write is popularly preached in pulpits, or expounded in the best Bible Colleges. It probably is. The issue is whether these web pages conform to the Holy Spirit’s interpretation of Scripture. Intimacy with the Lord Jesus is our only protection against deception. Even the great apostle Paul, whose writings and revelations are clearly in an utterly different league to mine, acknowledged that we “see but a poor reflection” (1 Corinthians 13:12) . Every day, seekers of truth walk through a minefield satanically strewn with hidden dangers. Jesus will lead us safely through, but only if we fix our eyes on him. Related Pages The Bible: Divine Protection Against Deception Short, but very helpful Spiritual Deception The Spiritual Essentials for Accurate Bible Interpretation Creativity: Why God is not Interested in us Becoming his Dictating Machine

Breakthrough in Creativity For Christians Our Lord is Creator as well as Savior, and the Maker of rainbows and nightingales didn’t suddenly lose his creative urge at the close of Day Six. God’s creativity is inexhaustible. And you were made for him. He longs to express his creativity through you. As an instrument and musician together make beautiful music, you and your Lord can unite to create exquisite beauty. What you can do together defies imagination. When God does something, it’s not just functional, but beautiful; not arid necessity but brimming with unexpected joys. Consider the sun. A lesser god would have stopped at making it an essential power-house. Our Lord even went far beyond making it an exquisite time-piece. His love and ingenuity soared as he fashioned a warm bath of pleasure, delighting and inspiring all humanity. It forms weather patterns, sculpts clouds, sends leaves twisting and twirling like a ballerina. Its rays don’t just illuminate, they sparkle and dance, they paint rainbows and the ever-changing splendor of endless sunsets, splashing color through all the earth with unrestrained exuberance. Everything God does displays the inexhaustible creativity and extravagant generosity of the One who invites and empowers us to imitate him. Creative people long to be more like Father! The Creative Process Discovering how our creativity and God’s creativity mesh is both exciting and critical. If we get this wrong whatever we produce, no matter how good, will be less than what God wants and, no matter how much we enjoy our involvement in it, we will still miss a large part of the greatest joys a human can experience. It is so vital that we are convinced of the principle described below, that I will quickly examine it from many different angles, not to be repetitive, but to confirm that no matter how we approach it, truth leads to the one, thrilling conclusion. When writing my favorite book, I pleaded with God that it be all of him and none of me. That seemed spiritual and I sincerely meant it, but God did not seem interested. His revelation came only in drips, and putting it together was like trying to thread needles with spastic hands. All of God? I could not possibly have poured more of my own effort into that book, yet I knew God was there – powerfully. My prayer to become God’s dictating machine fizzled because I had not counted on God’s love. He ignored my offer, just like the father in Jesus’ parable ignored his prodigal son’s offer to relinquish sonship and become a hired hand (Luke 15:18,21-24) . The Almighty wants to give us the thrill and honor of genuine involvement in his magnificent purposes. Being creative is God-like and he longs for his children to know this joy. If, through his inexplicable love, Christ wants me as co-heir, he wants me as co-author not a dictating machine (see 1 Corinthians 3:9; 2 Corinthians 6.1). From the age of four, I loved helping grandpa lay cement paths. Almost anyone could do a better job than a little child, but that was irrelevant. I was irreplaceable. I had a special place in grandpa’s heart. And you have a special place in God’s heart. Physically, the Lord is totally self-sufficient. He needs us no more than a handyman needs the services of a four-year-old. But the Father’s joy could never be complete without your contribution. Has ever a father’s heart swelled with loving pride at a child’s pathetic attempt to help him? Then how much more will the boundless love of your Father in heaven be stirred by your attempts – even your weakest attempts – to honor him with your service. To strangers, your ministry may just be one of thousands. But not to someone who loves you. And you mean most to the One who willed you into existence, fashioned you, redeemed you, and longs to fulfill your every need. Expect a personal invitation to a royal command performance in the presence of his Majesty, the King of kings. Divine love is a compelling reason for God valuing our efforts. Here is another: our raw natural abilities are as much a product of God’s creativity as anything he could ever do. Is it hard to believe the exalted Lord would like the sound of your voice or the work of your hands? Remember who created that voice and those hands. Beware: denigrating our gift comes close to denigrating the Giver. There’s a point where humility degenerates into an insult to the One who made you and empowers you. I’ve fallen over the edge too often. And here is something even more significant: creativity is among our God-given gifts. For our Lord to deny our (consecrated) creative efforts he would have to deny his own skill in making us. All of God, none of me? ‘That’s good!’ she gushed when he finished his song. ‘Oh, it wasn’t me,’ he humbly said, ‘it was the Lord.’ ‘No, it wasn’t that good!’ Some people’s claim to divine inspiration produces such mediocrity that it seems an excuse for laziness or, more likely, a failure to see the hole in the ‘all of God, none of me’ half-truth. Self must die – sinful independence, pride, selfishness, and trying to earn heaven’s approval. And we must yield everything to Christ, acknowledging that his ways are higher than ours. But to go so far beyond this that we renounce and denigrate our divinely-created mental and physical powers is as unchristian as gnostic heretics who taught that everything physical is of the devil. Paul’s ministry was an astounding mixture of hardship (torture, deprivation, shipwreck) and miracles (healings, earthquake, snakebite survival, blinding of Elymas’ eyes). Likewise, your ministry, whether it be music, literature, art, dance, preaching, or whatever, should be a peculiar mixture of the natural (plain hard work) and the supernatural (divine intervention). The same passage of Scripture that emphasizes the prophetic (ie supernatural) side of music, also points to the existence of a training system (1 Chronicles 25:1-8, especially 7,8) . That our Lord wants us to be submissive but active partners in his work, not mindless robots, is demonstrated in the penning of Scripture. In the original language, the individual style of each human writer is very obvious. It is truly the Word of God, yet the Lord ordained it that each sentence bears the imprint of the human writer. He chose to use, rather than over-ride, the individual personalities of the writers. If this is so for Scripture, which is more God-inspired than anything we could produce, it will be true of even our most Spirit-filled efforts. A man and a woman in love long for a union, the natural result of which is offspring that are neither entirely the man’s, nor the woman’s, but bear the unmistakable marks of both. That union, Scripture boldly declares, has a spiritual parallel (Ephesians 5:31-32) . Though this initially shocks our impure minds, it rings true. The human desire to express love in this manner was placed within us by the One who fashioned us in his image. The inexhaustible creativity of God longs, through our union with him, to birth within us unique and wondrous things, bearing the image, not just of one partner, but of both him and us. A musician and an instrument unite to produce sounds which neither would produce without the other. We are living instruments fashioned by the divine Instrument Maker with greater sophistication than any man-made instrument, having our own creativity. Like an instrument maker with his cherished instrument, our Maker longs to blend his ability with ours to produce unique sounds to bless the world. So, both to express his unfathomable love for us and to display his own genius in creating us, the omnipotent Lord treasures our contribution. But because that same love yearns for intimacy with us and that same creativity forever craves new expression, the Almighty longs to couple his supernatural ability with our natural effort to birth something as unique and as precious as is a child to its loving parents. The product of this supernatural union will be in one sense human, in another sense divine; an earthly art glowing with heavenly glory. Let’s clarify the often misunderstood role of human effort. As a proud attempt to earn salvation, good works are abhorrent. Wrong attitudes turn good works sour. As an expression of loving submission to God, however, sweat is beautiful. For the Spirit-filled Christian in divine submission, human exertion and divine enabling are not opponents but allies. View inspiration and effort not as an incompatible mix of oil and water but as bricks and mortar. They merge to build a monument of love for the glory of God – glory that his father-heart longs to share with us. Human Instruction Versus Heavenly Inspiration Those who are called to minister in music, art, dancing, acting, preaching, or whatever, will seek to refine their gift. If we are ever hesitant, the parable of the talents is sufficient to seal the matter for us (Matthew 25:14-30) . Yet as we grow in Christ, our motivation intensifies. Our love for God fills us with a longing to develop the abilities he had graciously bestowed upon us. We treasure the gift because we adore the Giver. A man takes from the earth a precious diamond and spends hours studying and cutting it, desiring to reveal to the fullest the beauty God has placed within it. In like manner, we labor to display the beauty resident within our gift, that the Giver might be glorified. Longing to see our Lord’s eyes sparkle with joy, we polish his gift till it gleams. We want it to shine so brightly that he can see his face in it. Then we want the whole world to see that face. For the secular artist, training and practice are simply a matter of common sense. Our motivation is much deeper and sweeter. Yet sometimes practice and training seem at odds with ministering in the Spirit’s power. A lady I admire was very much used of God until she started taking singing lessons. Formerly, when she was in church worshipping her Lord, God would often suddenly give her an entirely new song. There was no time for rehearsals. The song was divinely created for that specific occasion. The moment there was a pause in the service, she would share that beautiful song with the congregation. With remarkable consistency, her songs would blend in with the rest of the service in ways beyond human control. Since commencing singing lessons, however, her training seemed to be hindering her ministry. My guess is that her lessons had simply made her more self-conscious, causing her to focus upon correct voice production, rather than focusing upon her Savior. Such a change of focus would probably have an adverse affect upon any ministry, let alone one so dependent upon hearing from God that very moment. The solution, it would seem, is not less practice, but more. Eventually, such things as correct breathing should become almost second nature. Then she will be able to concentrate upon the Lord and sing correctly as well. The result will surely be an even more effective ministry. Conclusion Souls are God’s responsibility, sounds are our responsibility. That’s the way many Christian musicians view it. God wants us to do our best, but they imagine that’s about the limit of his interest in our art. The Lord is expected to take the back seat, politely applauding the finished performance, but basically leaving us to our own devices, artistically. We now know differently. Creator God longs to be involved in our art – guiding, inspiring, tutoring, and at times actually creating and physically expressing himself through us. Our loving Lord wants partnership, not dictatorship, nor disinterest, in every area of our lives. ‘Open my lips,’ prayed the psalmist, ‘and my mouth will show forth your praise’ (Psalm 51:15) . ‘Take my lips and speak through them, take my mind and think through it,’ became one of Frances Ridley Havergal’s favorite prayers. Let’s never forget that creativity has its ultimate Source in God, not man. The further one goes from the source the more polluted the water. Forget about following the world; you will lead it, if you draw close enough to the true Source of creativity. Be not quick to assume God is not in your creativity just because it didn’t come in a technicolor vision or arrive at supersonic speed. God assists and inspires us in a thousand ways. The Spirit of the Almighty resides within us. Every day we speak with God. Every day we’re seated in heavenly places. To us, the supernatural is commonplace. It would hardly be surprising if our efforts are more divinely inspired than we realize. Yet each of us could probably develop still further our ability to receive from heaven. My passion is to inspire you to enter into an ever-deepening partnership with the Creator, the One who ‘gives songs in the night,’ the Origin of ‘every good and perfect gift,’ the Lord of sound and time, who is constantly worthy of a new song. Seek him. Yield to him. Harmonize with him. The result will last for eternity. Next Page: Breaking Through Barriers To Creativity

The Bible & Multiple Personalities   God, the Bible, & Christian Factors In Healing Dissociative Identity Disorder It is tempting to suppose it is Christian to fight or suppress one’s ungodly parts, but is this really the Spirit-led, Bible-based way to heal Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality Disorder)? Is Jesus into burying problems or healing? What is the pinnacle of biblical revelation and the hallmark of an authentically Christian move: suppression or spiritual transformation; human effort or bringing Jesus into an impossible situation? Did our Savior sacrifice his all to usher in force and oppression, or love and grace? To heal from Dissociative Identity Disorder, even those not Christian must do as the Bible teaches about being kind to oneself. The God of the Bible neither condemns people who are hurting, nor supports being harsh with oneself. We will see that any Christian who thinks otherwise needs to read the Bible deeper. Healing also requires facing the truth of one’s past. This seems scary but, as the Bible declares, it sets us free. The critical importance of this aspect of biblical revelation is explained in a link at the end of this page. We will start, however, with the Bible’s emphasis on the other fundamental aspect of healing from Dissociative Identity Disorder: forgiving oneself and being kind to oneself. Ably supported by the enemy of our souls, we Christians have a tendency to unintentionally distort biblical revelation in a way that perpetuates our problems. The goal of this webpage is to explore relevant Bible truths to gently cut through spiritual misconceptions that could be hindering healing from Dissociative Identity Disorder.     Since some form of child abuse is usually at the heart of Dissociative Identity Disorder, let’s briefly consider what even mild child abuse does to a person and how Christians are tempted to react to it. Childhood is too short for little children to question everything adults tell them and the danger is simply too great for them to refuse to accept as truth whatever they are told until they have proved it for themselves. It is vital for their safety and development that children be virtually prewired to accept as gospel whatever respected adults in their lives tell them. This works beautifully when children are nurtured by kind-hearted people as God intended. It makes them alarmingly vulnerable, however, when an adult they accept as a source of truth and a role model, instead of manifesting the heart of God, repeatedly puts them down. Moreover, child abusers do not want to be caught. They have a vested interest in throwing everyone off the scent by acting very differently in public and establishing a high degree of respectability in the community. The result is highly confusing to young victims because not only does it make any reporting of the abuse likely to fall on deaf ears, observing the high regard other people have for the abuser reinforces a child’s conclusion that what the abuser says must be true. So even without anything physical, simply being subjected to repeated verbal putdowns during one’s most formative and impressionable years is devastating. It mutilates one’s self-image so profoundly that the damage will last a lifetime unless a determined and prolonged effort of almost herculean proportions is made later in life to counteract the negative effects. No matter how well-respected a person might be in the community, it remains ungodly to put people down or be harsh or unkind. No Christian wants to take on the values of an ungodly person and yet this is what we inadvertently do when we fall into the habit of verbally abusing ourselves or treating ourselves with the harshness of our childhood abusers. Tragically, however, the habit becomes as strong as heroin. As astonishing as it seems, rather than facing the devastating conclusion that we have taken on board the values of an abuser and are even addicted to it, we Christians are easily seduced into letting ourselves off the hook by actually convincing ourselves that we are pleasing God by acting like the devil in how we treat ourselves. It is frighteningly easy to re-label as humility or dying to self or fighting the flesh, what is actually a deeply engrained addiction to perpetuating in our lives the ungodly way our abusers treated us. If we verbally abuse ourselves or think lowly of ourselves as our abusers did, let’s at least not pretend we are being godly by modeling ourselves on them. Even more confusing, some abusers claim to be close to God. This adds spiritual abuse to their crimes but the perpetrators’ approval rating among those they gather around themselves makes it harder than ever to realize that this person’s behavior is actually spiritual abuse. We might even be so bewildered that the very thought seems blasphemous and presume that the person must be reflecting the heart of God and allow his/her rants to drown out the Spirit’s whispers. These whispers will seem disturbingly foreign and unbelievable because they are gentle, encouraging and uplifting – the exact opposite of what we have been taught. God has faith in us and has great plans for us, and if this is contrary to what key humans have told us, we are preconditioned to conclude that the Spirit’s promptings must be nothing but our own misguided wishful thinking. In short, even without deliberately intending to, abusers can so corrupt their position of trust and power that they browbeat and brainwash and undermine their victim’s confidence so appallingly as to render them unable to think for themselves or even believe God when he speaks to them. Just as there was much that was right and Bible-based about the beliefs and preaching of the spiritual leaders who crucified their Messiah, so it is with the wolves in sheep’s clothing that enter the very church of God ( Scriptures ). “Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ :” warned Jesus (Matthew 7:22-23). Of course, we must never passively accept less than God’s best in our lives. There is no room for acting like spoilt brats, irresponsibly demanding that God do all the work while we laze around, content with mediocrity. We must cooperate with our Savior in passionately wanting change and not only praying for it but exerting every effort to persuade, encourage, inspire and urge every part of us to surrender to our Lord so that he may reign supreme in every aspect of our lives, as he does in heaven. This is neither cold-hearted indifference and sloth, nor is it imitating the devil by condemning ourselves and beating ourselves up like some hate-filled tyrant. Let’s get this right: Satan is the accuser (Revelation 12:10); God is the forgiver. Suppression and oppression come not from the heart of God but from his enemy. Refusing to join forces with the devil means refusing to slander, ridicule or belittle ourselves or anyone else. Neither demeaning self-talk nor being cruel to oneself is in heaven’s spiritual armory.   We are not meant to turn the Holy Spirit on or off according to the situation. God’s Spirit, the divine source of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and so on, is meant to be a continuous spring, flowing like rivers of living water from our inner most being (John 7:38). It is unthinkable that sweet water and bitter water should flow from the same spring. Likewise, points out James 3:9-11, cursing anyone made in God’s likeness should never spring from the same heart from which praises to God flow. (This Scripture allows no loopholes for cursing oneself. Since you are as much in God’s image as anyone else, it is still God’s image that is at stake.)   So the Spirit’s flow springing from within should be both consistent and continual. We are to “ever be filled” with the Spirit (Ephesians 5:18, Amplified Bible). Just as we are to love everyone (even enemies) and “Be joyful  always  (1 Thessalonians 5:16, emphasis mine) and “Make every effort to live in peace with  all ” people (Hebrews 12:14, emphasis mine), so we are meant to always be operating in every fruit of the Spirit – not being Godlike in how we think of others and devil-like in how we think of ourselves.   The Lord wants you to demonstrate how filled you are with the fruit of the Spirit by being good, kind, gentle, patient, peaceable and loving not just to enemies but to ungodly parts of you that frustrate, annoy and embarrass you. As much as your loving Lord wants you to cooperate with him in bringing about changes within you, he does not want you to attempt this by resorting to such carnal ways as hate, anger, violence, impatience, unforgiveness or slander. Such behavior grieves your Savior, regardless of whether the hostility is directed towards yourself or other people. Hating yourself and having Jesus as your Savior are trains headed in the opposite direction.   My dilemma is that it is vital for you to fully grasp the truth just explained, but I do not want to labor this so much as to risk boring you. So at whatever point in the text you become so convinced that you could not possibly become more convinced, that’s when I suggest you interrupt your reading and scroll down to the next heading:  Christian Healing . How we treat ourselves is so critical to our spiritual well-being, however, that in case it takes a lot for you to become that certain, I will continue to serve you by examining this issue from different angles, piling up confirmation after confirmation.   We can easily fall into the delusion of supposing we are fighting the flesh – our ungodly nature – by being hard on ourselves, when often, through the very act of being hard on ourselves, we are actually manifesting the flesh. It is striving to attain holiness not by the only acceptable spiritual way of faith in the power of the sacrificial death of our Lord, but through our own (fleshly) efforts.   Galatians 3:1,3   You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. . . .  After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?   Philippians 3:3-9   For it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who  put no confidence in the flesh  . . . If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: . . . as for legalistic righteousness, faultless. But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss . . . I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ – the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.   Colossians 2:20-3:1   Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules: “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? . . . Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their  false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value  in restraining sensual indulgence. Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. (Emphasis mine.)   This is of immense significance to Christians with Dissociative Identity Disorder because they are often tempted to see their alters as manifestations of their ungodly nature and to suppose that by oppressing and suppressing them they are being Christlike.   Many good people think that by despising themselves and treating themselves harshly – especially when they slip up – that it is being godly. It is not. To be godly is to think and act like God. The Bible is emphatic that God is loving and forgiving. So we cannot be godly – we cannot display God’s heart – unless we are filled with love and forgiveness towards those who have hurt us,  including ourselves .   Consider also the implications that the key feature of Dissociative Identity Disorder is having not mere urges but alters (short for alternate  personalities ) all of whom have a will of their own.   We should win alters to Christ the same way we seek to win over anyone else who has a will of his/her own. We know that it would be repulsive to God to try to make converts by using force to compel people to submit to God’s ways. If compulsion were the Almighty’s plan, he would immediately force the entire human race to submit to him. The God of love seeks not our domination but our cooperation. God’s way is always to bring about spiritual transformation by wooing people with his love and truth until they  willingly  surrender to his love and wisdom. To quote from Romans 2:4, “God’s kindness leads you toward repentance.” Consider also these Scriptures:   Acts 14:16-17   In the past, he let all nations go their own way. Yet he has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you [pagans] rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy.   2 Peter 3:9  The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.   2 Peter 3:15  Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him.   All these Scripture reveal that God’s way of bringing rebellious people to himself is through love, kindness and patience. We are to follow God’s lead. In the inspired words of Scripture, we must “overcome evil with good,” (Romans 12:21). As Jesus pointed out, the Holy Lord makes the sun rise on those who are evil and unrighteous. He opens the heavens and waters their land and keeps blessing those who curse him, and doing good to those who grieve him. To be his children we must do likewise (Matthew 5:45). If parts of us act like our enemy, we must take seriously God’s insistence that we love our enemies and “pray for those who persecute you.”   We are to have the same heart as the exalted Son of God, who came not to serve but to serve and to pour out his life for ungodly (Mark 10:45; Philippians 2:5-8).     Do you suppose you would receive God’s approving smile if you heartlessly abandoned a deeply hurting child who was solely your responsibility and you let that little one suffer endlessly, not only refusing to comfort him/her but also preventing anyone else from emotionally supporting the child? Would you be able to stand before your eternal Judge and brazenly excuse your mistreatment by claiming the child is yours and therefore you can treat him/her however you wish? Of course not. Being your own child would merely magnify, not diminish, your responsibility. If this is true for your offspring – someone whose genes are only fifty percent yours – your responsibility would, if anything, be even graver if the child you let languish in needless pain and ignorance is your inner child. To close your heart, defiantly saying, “It’s part of me, so I can do anything I like with it,” is highly offensive to the God to whom we must all one day give account.   You and your alters might share the same body but this fact in no way gives you license to be less than loving towards them, any more than a husband and wife being one flesh (Mark 10:7-8) gives anyone permission to mistreat his wife. On the contrary, sharing the same body increases your responsibility to be kind to your alters, just as being physically one increases a husband’s obligation to be tenderly compassionate towards his partner. In fact, the Bible insists that for a man to ride roughshod over the feelings of the woman he is one with will threaten his relationship with God.   1 Peter 3:7  Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect . . . so that nothing will hinder your prayers.   Scripture gives a powerful example but before mentioning it I must point out that it is  not  saying people should force themselves, or be forced, to do anything they find distasteful. It is referring to something both parties find enjoyable but one of them, solely for spiritual reasons, (nothing to do with past trauma) wants to fast from physical pleasure. In this specific situation, the Bible even goes to the extreme of declaring that if you want to devote yourself to prayer, and the person you are one flesh with wants physical pleasure instead, you must let your partner’s fleshly desires take precedence over your spiritual desires. 1 Corinthians 7:3-5 The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife. Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again . . .     No matter how much we might hate ourselves, we are stuck with the fact that each of us is made in the image of the God we claim to love. We have already noted James observing how twisted it is to bless God using the same lips that curse someone made in God’s image. Add to this what John says:   1 John 4:20  If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.   1 John 5:1  Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well.   Jesus declared that people “will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken,”  (Matthew 12:36)  and that “anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell,”  (Matthew 5:22) . Again I ask, where is the loophole that allows us to insult ourselves?   “Words from a wise man’s mouth are gracious . . .” says Ecclesiastes 10:12 . Paul added, “Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt . . .”  (Colossians 4:6)  and to the Ephesians he wrote, “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen,”  (Ephesians 4:29) . What gives us the right to reject this when it comes to how we speak to ourselves?    The Lord who gave his very life for you is worthy of our slavish devotion. Nevertheless, everyone who dies to self and lives for Christ benefits immensely because, without it we remain self-obsessed fools who ruin our lives, like junkies focused on their next fix instead of really living. As our Creator and Savior only the good Lord, not us, truly has our best interests at heart. The One who gave his all for us is so passionately and selflessly devoted to our well-being that the smartest thing we could ever do is to obey him relentlessly. Often, however, we are so blinded by self-hatred or infatuated by short-term illusions or tormented by past failures that our view of life gets so murky that to live the best possible, regret-free life we need to abandon our own whims and focus exclusively on pleasing our wonderful Lord.   True Christians have relinquished all pretense of having the right to treat themselves however they wish. Do you not know that your very body is part of Christ himself? asks Paul  (1 Corinthians 6:15) . We “belong to the Lord,”  (1 Corinthians 15:23; Romans 14:8) . In the Bible’s sobering words, “You are not your own; you were bought at a price,”  (1 Corinthians 6:19) .   “For we are God’s workmanship,” says Ephesians 2:10 . Dare we criticize the work of the divine Craftsman?   Through Christ, you are a child of the King of kings. Dare you treat God’s child as dirt?   Of course we should refuse to indulge sinful desires but there is a big difference between that and treating yourself in a way that you would not dare treat someone else’s child, let alone treat divine royalty.    You might know the Scripture, “the joy of the LORD is your strength,” but how familiar are you with the context in which these profound words were uttered?   God’s people had rejected the true God and, despite warning after warning after warning, kept breaking his heart and hurting themselves by falling so deeply into paganism that the only way to shake them out of it was for God’s holy nation to be overrun by enemy soldiers who not only took over their land but captured the people and took many of them as prisoners of war to a foreign country where they languished in defeat and despite for decades. It is noteworthy that this drastic action was so effective that whereas their previous history was besmirched by countless incidents of falling into idolatry, it never happened again. Finally, the captives were released and allowed to return to Jerusalem. They celebrated their first holy feast (that could only be properly held in Jerusalem). During this sacred event, the Scriptures were read and explained to the large crowd. Such conviction fell on them that they wept profusely.   Nehemiah 8:9-12  Then Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who were instructing the people said to them all, “This day is sacred to the LORD your God. Do not mourn or weep.” For all the people had been weeping as they listened to the words of the Law. Nehemiah said, “Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.” The Levites calmed all the people, saying, “Be still, for this is a sacred day. Do not grieve.” Then all the people went away to eat and drink, to send portions of food and to celebrate with great joy, because they now understood the words that had been made known to them.   This tells us two things:   1.   Although we need to recognize the gravity of our sins, it is not acting holy or pleasing to God to keep being miserable and beating ourselves up over our sins. Forgiveness and holiness comes through faith, not by being hard on ourselves.   2.   Reveling in God’s joy strengthens us; staying miserable keeps us weak. If we have fallen because of weakness, the last thing we need is anything that will keep us weak.       The fruit of the Spirit – the very essence of God and product of your union with him – is not criticism or harshness but kindness, gentleness and patience. These qualities should so saturate our lives that they are the way we respond to every situation, including times we dislike ourselves. Just as we must free ourselves from the hypocrisy of the double standard of judging others more harshly than ourselves, so we must rid ourselves of the double standard of slandering ourselves and treating ourselves with a harshness and contempt that we would never treat others with.     Christian Healing   Why God Requires Christians with Multiple Personalities to Focus on Healing   We always suspected God would be concerned about how we treat other people, but many of us used to think that if we were to treat ourselves badly it would somehow be less heart-breaking to him. That logic crumbles, however, when we consider that for God to be less concerned about how you treat yourself would only make sense if, to God, other people were more important than you. Tragically, that might very well be the way you have come to think of yourself but it is not remotely how Almighty God thinks of you.   The Perfect Lord is no hypocrite. He does not ask you to love him with  all  your heart  (Mark 12:30)  unless this is precisely how devoted he is to loving you. As I have explained in greater depth elsewhere, since it is logically impossible to go beyond  all , for God not to be half-hearted but to love you with all his heart (which he does) it is impossible for him to love anyone in the universe more than you. This, as staggering as it seems, makes it impossible for anyone to be more precious, or more important, to the Almighty than you are.   That’s why how you treat yourself matters so much. It is also why it is so important to God that you heal from everything holding you back from truly thriving and reaching your full potential. So for the rest of this webpage we will explore the depth of God’s yearning for you to cooperate with him in healing.   First, we need to crack the fallacy that if your healing is so important to the Almighty then he will bring it about without your cooperation. To expect that, is to expect God to have the heart of an abuser.   As you know, Dissociative Identity Disorder is a reaction to childhood trauma, and almost always that trauma was the result of an abuser’s actions. So you most likely have had bitter, first-hand experience with someone who abused his/her power. For this to keep happening during one’s most impressionable years, predisposes a person to expect that anyone with great power will abuse it. As hard as it is to break out of that mentality, however, you need to do so when it comes to how you think of the God who is not only all-powerful but all-loving. Even the word  love  can be terrifying in the mouth of an abuser but, for God, love means utter selflessness and tenderly treating everyone with the highest respect and kindness.   I hope you don’t find triggering my attempt to ram this home in this brief quote from what I have written elsewhere:   You cannot fervently love someone without aching for that person to love you – especially if you know that person desperately needs you in his/her life. To deeply love someone means you could have everything else in the universe, and yet without that person’s love you would still be heartbroken. To love is to make oneself so vulnerable that even having unlimited power could not help. Omnipotence could easily force someone to obey you. Or it could produce something like a ‘love’ potion, causing a person to be under the illusion of loving you. But genuine love can never be compelled. If it involves force or chemicals or deceit or bribery it is a sham, and can never satisfy your yearning for that person’s love.   There are things that not even omnipotence can achieve. It cannot, for example, produce a square circle. It can easily turn a circle into a two dimensional square, but the instant it has straight sides it is not a circle. Likewise, if someone is forced to act in love, it is not genuine love. Even with unlimited power, there is little anyone could do to induce genuine love in a person, other than be loving and wait for a response.   We would be appalled if a man kidnapped a woman and raped and enslaved her because he claims he loves her, wants her as his wife and is convinced he can make her happy. It would be an immoral abuse of power, regardless of whether he used physical force or threats – in which case she would be conscious of the violation of her rights – or if he used drugs or hypnotism so that she is unaware that what is happening is against her will. Real love respects the desires of the beloved, no matter how much it clashes with the lover’s personal longings, and no matter how certain he is that the person would benefit from a lifelong intimacy with him.   So real love not only wants the best for you, it will not violate your wishes by forcing it upon you. As already mentioned, real love is about cooperation, not domination.   I’ve mentioned elsewhere that, as a Christian, healing should be a higher priority to you than your marriage, your children, your job, your ministry and even your relationship with God. Why? Precisely because each of those other responsibilities are so important, and each of them is profoundly impacted by how harmoniously and effectively your alters pull together. Every aspect of your life and future will suffer if you are disorganized inside, and everything you touch will thrive if you are exquisitely functioning within.   None of us has any good thing we created ourselves:   1 Chronicles 29:11,14   Yours, O LORD, is the greatness . . . for everything in heaven and earth is yours. . . . Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand.   John 3:27    . . . A man can receive only what is given him from heaven.   1 Corinthians 4:7  For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?   Everything we have has been entrusted to us by God and, as Jesus so emphatically taught, God holds us responsible for how we develop it. Consider the parable of the man who buried his talent. If you have a moment, it’s worth re-reading Matthew 25:13-30. Matthew 25:13-30 - Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour. Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his property to them. To one he gave five talents of money, to another two talents, and to another one talent, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. . . . But the man who had received the one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. The man who had received the five talents brought the other five. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with five talents. See, I have gained five more.’ His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’ . . . Then the man who had received the one talent came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’ His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest. Take the talent from him and give it to the one who has the ten talents. For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’   No matter how much we might convince ourselves that we can put our feet up and expect God to do everything for us, Jesus’ powerful teaching demolishes that fallacy and screams that God expects us to put in the effort.   In Jesus’ parable, the servant who failed did not blow his talent on an orgy of self-indulgence. He did not spend a cent of the master’s money on himself, nor misuse it in any way. Additionally, he kept the master’s money safe and returned it the instant the master wanted it. In all these ways this cautious, clean-living man was faithful, trustworthy and honorable. What made him a “wicked, lazy servant,” thrown “into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth,” is that he left undeveloped the potential of what had been given to him.   People with Dissociative Identity Disorder are living on a goldmine. They have within them huge reservoirs of undeveloped potential. It was originally outside their control that they found themselves in this situation but now the issue is whether they will leave that potential buried within them or resolve to do all they can to dig it up and develop it.   Every part of you that you know might be a model of devotion to God and have impeccable moral standards, but what about parts of you that you know nothing of – parts that you could be aware of and help them develop a living relationship with Christ, if only you had bothered?   You might never dream of being sexually unfaithful to your marriage. In fact, sex might repulse you. That does not negate the possibility, however, of there being a part of you that has not only successfully blocked out your revulsion to sex but also has blocked out your awareness of God and commitment to his standards and is actually having multiple affairs while you remain totally oblivious to any of it. No matter how inconceivable this seems to you, I know couples who eventually discovered to their horror and bewilderment that this has been happening for years, until their marriage partner finally uncovered it. Likewise, I know of people who would never contemplate sexually abusing a child, let alone their own children, and yet this is exactly what has happened for years while the moral part of them was asleep or somehow lost awareness of a few moments from time to time. Clearly, this is of stupendous importance to God. I do not wish to alarm you but the stakes are simply too high not to get to thoroughly know every part of you.   What keeps people trapped in addictions that destroy not only their own lives but that of their loved ones (such as alcoholism or the financial ruin of a gambling addiction) are the same two things that cause people to keep letting Dissociative Identity Disorder devastate their lives and loved ones.   The first of these things is living in denial – refusing to admit to oneself that one has a serious problem. This grave mistake stymies everything God longs to achieve in and through us. Our entire spiritual well-being hinges on facing head-on problems in our lives. The God of truth never honors denial:   Proverbs 28:13  He who conceals [or covers] his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy.   Psalms 32:3-6  When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. . . . Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity . . . and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Therefore let everyone who is godly pray to you while you may be found; surely when the mighty waters rise, they will not reach him.   Psalms 139:23   Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.   James 5:16  Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. . . .   This divine principle extends beyond sin:   Psalms 26:2  Test me, O LORD, and try me, examine my heart and my mind.   Deuteronomy 8:2  Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart . . .   You are not to ignore issues but “in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God,”  (Philippians 4:6) . God is truth, and this is what he honors. More than once, Jesus asked sick people what they wanted before healing them. He required them to admit their need.   Those who blast through the roadblock of denial, face only one more major obstacle: being unwilling to pay the temporary but considerable cost of a lifestyle change. What would you think of an alcoholic who terrorizes his family, beating them up every time he comes home drunk, and then excuses his atrocious behavior by saying, “If God wanted me to change, he’d give me an instant and effortless deliverance from alcohol”? Would our gracious Lord be impressed by such an attitude?   Similarly, though torturously long and painful, healing from Dissociative Identity Disorder is supremely important spiritually. Occasionally, the Almighty gives a painless, effortless deliverance from a life-controlling problem but I carefully explain in a link at the end of this webpage why it is rare and why it is actually in our best interest for our struggle to be long and hard. The very battle builds Christlikeness into our lives in a way that miracles can never achieve.   Whereas my writings usually frolic in the wonderful benefits of healing, the sober fact is that genuine followers of Jesus have a serious spiritual obligation to do everything it takes to determine whether they have Dissociative Identity Disorder. And when confirmed, God requires them to face this reality, resist doubt and give healing top priority, no matter how much prolonged, painful effort this demands.   If we neglect healing we Christians will be held divinely accountable. I would prefer to bypass this side of the truth but, as loath as I am to mention it, I feel obligated before God to inform of the dire consequences for those tempted to let healing slip in their priorities. We cannot change past mistakes but now that we know better we can receive divine forgiveness and stop repeating those mistakes. The dilemma is that the very truths that will spur some of us to desperately needed breakthroughs and achievement could crush some who are already doing their utmost.   In  Accountability   I provide still more Scriptures about God holding Christians accountable for how much we avail ourselves of healing opportunities and so on, but if you are currently highly motivated to endure the hard, painful slog that healing demands, you have no need of it. Visit it only if your enthusiasm droops.   It is obvious that to hate someone God loves is to put oneself on a collision course with God. So consider the implications of these three words: God loves you.   We have seen that to think it acceptable to treat yourself worse than you would treat a stranger is as appalling as mistreating someone and trying to excuse your offense by saying it is your child or the person with whom you are physically one.   No matter how much you try to drown it, the truth keeps bobbing up again: the way you treat yourself matters immensely because you matter immensely to the most important Person in the cosmos. You might find that as believable as a bikini-clad talking elephant but if the eternal Son of God gave his life for you, it means the Almighty has invested his everything in you. There is no escaping the fact that this makes you stupendously important to him.   The Infallible One declares you lovable. Dare you sneer at his assessment? The Holy One forgives and pronounces you clean. Dare you arrogantly accuse him of not being holy enough and insist, by the way you think of yourself, that his impeccable standards are too low?   Despite dying to self being divinely required and ultimately in our best interest and richly rewarding, the cold truth is that we initially find it painful. Since love is the very heart of God, a significant part of denying ourselves and yielding to God is loving and forgiving as God does. Obviously, this poses little problem with people we like and respect. Or, as Jesus put it, “Even ‘sinners’ love those who love them,”  (Luke 6:32) . The make-or-break challenge is having a Christlike attitude towards those we resent and despise and blame. Your personal nemesis – the one who stands between you and your willingness to obey God and be Christlike – probably won’t be Hitler or Stalin, but someone who has personally impacted your life. It is the person you are most sorely tempted not to love but instead vent your wrath on as the scapegoat for something significant that has gone wrong in your life. I use the word  scapegoat  with care. Like  Judas , it is actually a term that has entered our language via the Bible. The scapegoat is a key animal used on the Day of Atonement  (Leviticus 16:5-10;20-22)  and it points to Jesus, who has literally offered himself as your scapegoat – the innocent One who took upon himself all the blame for your bungles and catastrophes and has removed your sins from you. Whether it be our own failings or other people’s, and whether it be deliberate evil or unintentional blunders, human failings wreak havoc in our lives. Will we spurn the Holy One’s sacrifice and, instead of accepting what he did as our scapegoat, substitute the satisfaction it gives us to treat the person we most hate as our scapegoat for things that have messed up our lives? Whether the sinner we make our scapegoat is ourselves or someone else, makes no difference to the fact that to let someone other than our sinless Savior take the blame, is to deny the adequacy of Jesus’ atonement. Though we do not intend it as such, it ends up being the ultimate insult to our crucified Lord and a rejection of what he has done for us. As sin is the opposite of loving God, so is hating oneself.   The One who bore our punishment as he hung on the cross dredged up his last fragment of strength to gasp with his dying breath, “It is finished!” Will we pronounce him a liar? Dare, by the way we continue to treat ourselves as blameworthy, we keep insisting he is wrong? Dare we accuse him of not suffering enough for us? Was the torment he suffered for us so ‘little’ that we must keep putting ourselves down to make up for his ‘failure’ to bear in his body, soul and spirit the full consequences of our foul-ups?   Our destiny teeters on whether we will trust the enormity of what Almighty God achieved by entering the human race and the Lord of Glory suffering the ultimate disgrace for the sins of the world. Will we rest in what the King of the universe achieved on the cross as sufficient to resolve all the blame issues for everything that has devastated us, or will we let doubt drive us to abandon faith in Jesus and attempt to take matters into our own hands? Will we accept the enormity of what Christ did, or scorn it as inadequate? We have been forgiven, restored and exalted by the One who on our behalf was tortured to death, rose to life again and triumphantly ascended to heaven’s throne. For us, the terrifyingly righteous wrath of the Almighty was poured out on the Lord of Glory instead of us, but to continue to get mad at ourselves is to defiantly refuse to acknowledge that what he did was enough.   If your life has been riddled with putdowns, I not only feel for you, I admire you. For you to still be staggering on is heroic. I would be devastated if my webpage were to end up making you hate yourself for hating yourself. On the contrary, my longing is to inspire you to see yourself through God’s loving eyes – through the rose-tinted window of the Forgiving Lord who pronounces you not guilty and sees you as his darling child. To him, you are irreplaceable and infinitely valuable. Instead of being at cross purposes with all of heaven, join forces with the divine by treating yourself with the tenderness and patience and graciousness of God. Cooperate with the Almighty in fulfilling his beautiful plans for you by doing all it takes to heal. To truly believe that the good Lord is not like those who mistreated you, however, is likely to be quite a battle. To help you with this I have written the following webpages. In addition, however, I have many more pages specifically to help you heal from Dissociative Identity Disorder.   Related Pages Living in Denial: A Christian Perspective To God, You Are Special! Why, in God’s Eyes, You are Irreplaceable   God Loves You means You Are God’s Favorite! Forgiving Yourself (And keep following the first link at the end of the text for as many pages as it takes to be convinced.) How to Change Your Self-Image & Boost Self-Esteem Life’s Mysteries Explained (The benefits of deliverance from sin being difficult.)

Accountability    Perhaps you might argue that people who enter eternity having refused Christ’s free offer of salvation (free to us but ever so costly to him) face such an appalling future that nothing they do could make it worse. Those who have accepted Christ’s salvation, however, will be held accountable for their actions: Romans 14:10,12  You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. . . . So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God.   1 Corinthians 3:11  For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames.   1 Corinthians 4:4-5  My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men’s hearts. At that time each will receive his praise from God.   Matthew 16:27  For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done.   Romans 2:6-8  God “will give to each person according to what he has done.” To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger.   2 Corinthians 5:10  For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.   Galatians 6:7-8  Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.   Hebrews 13:17  Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account. . . .   Related Scriptures   Ecclesiastes 12:14  For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.   Matthew 12:36  But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken.   Colossians 3:23-24  Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. . . .   Hebrews 4:13  Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.   1 Peter 4:5  But they will have to give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.   Revelation 2:23  I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds.   Back to Main Page

Diagnosis Doubts Imagination or Alters (Insiders)? Anyone diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (also known as Multiple Personality Disorder) can expect an intense battle trying to believe the diagnosis. The dilemma is that at the very heart of Dissociative Identity Disorder are powerful forces acting to keep a person from knowing or accepting that he/she has D.I.D. If you were to have Dissociative Identity Disorder, it would mean that parts of you are hurting more than you realize and that they will never heal without you accepting their existence. Unless you acknowledge them, parts of you will forever reel in needless inner pain, confusion, guilt, fear and ignorance, and neglecting them will forever hold you back from the joy, peace, fulfillment and all sorts of achievements that would otherwise be yours. Moreover, to have D.I.D. means that you are far more capable and have much greater intellectual, social and spiritual potential, plus greater ability to help people, than you currently realize. And it means you will never reach your remarkable potential unless you admit to yourself that you have Dissociative Identity Disorder. What you suffered when you were young crushed your self-esteem, causing you to underestimate how capable and valuable you are. Your full potential, however, extends so far beyond your expectations that it cannot be explained merely in terms of low self-esteem. If you have Dissociative Identity Disorder, and have not yet healed, you have access to only part of your brain. You have done remarkably well with what is available to you but until you acknowledge other parts of you, they have exclusive access to other parts of your brain that have developed independently. These parts of you have not just additional memories but additional talents, abilities and intellectual capacity. This makes discovering that you have Dissociative Identity Disorder such good news that I am envious of everyone making this discovery. For just a glimpse of why I feel envious, see Your Amazing Potential if you have Dissociative Identity Disorder. As in the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-28) , God longs for us to achieve the highest we are capable of and not be like the unfaithful servant, who caved in to fear (Matthew 25:25), rather than develop what had been entrusted to him. If there is the slightest possibility that you might have Dissociative Identity Disorder, you owe it not only to yourself but to God, to those who love you and to all those you could help if you reached your full potential, to discover whether you really have D.I.D. and, if you do, to heal so that you have full access to all your abilities and the strength – to say nothing of peace and fulfilment – that flows from it. Healing necessitates a fierce determination to discover the truth and to keep holding on to that truth. “Seek and you will find,” declared Jesus (Matthew 7:7) . There are no promises to those who do not seek. Christ asked a key question of a man who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. “Do you want to be made whole?” (John 5:6) . Jesus zeroed in on this often-overlooked question, even though the man was deliberately lying in the very area where people hoping for healing miracles congregated (John 5:2-7) . People can seem desperate for healing and yet in their heart of hearts be less motivated to heal than we would expect. Was the man now so comfortable with his limitations that he was unwilling to embrace the changes to his lifestyle that healing would cause? If he were to be healed, for example, he could no longer beg for a living. He would have to find a job. Jesus had to warn those who wanted to follow him that they must be willing to pay the price (Luke 9:57-62; 14:26-33). Healing usually requires a stubborn commitment to keep embracing whatever temporary challenges it costs to keep pressing forward on the healing journey, and this is particularly the case with Dissociative Identity Disorder. We will later touch on indicators that one might have Dissociative Identity Disorder but for now, we should focus on what makes the diagnosis so hard to believe and accept. Dissociative Identity Disorder is the product of one’s mind trying to reduce the overwhelming stress of a traumatic childhood by keeping parts of you ignorant about the full extent of what you have suffered. This means that if you have Dissociative Identity Disorder, no part of you knows your full story until you have completed the long process of fully healing. Moreover, if you have Dissociative Identity Disorder, the part of you that interacts most with the real world – handling everyday matters like employment, finances and social interaction – is particularly “protected” from awareness of past or present trauma. This is no coincidence; it is a deliberate strategy of the mind to free up this important part of you from such debilitating distractions as fear, defeatism and overwhelming emotional pain, so that you can do what is needed to function in the real world. It is the hidden parts of a person who are more likely to have obvious problems. They bear most of the inner pain and distress, are less aware of current reality, act in a way less consistent with one’s physical age, and so on. The part who is most often present – sometimes called the host – is the one for whom life seems the most normal and, by being kept unaware of past and/or present trauma, is kept unaware of the alters who bear that trauma. So the part who is most often in charge can be expected to find it especially hard to believe that he/she has Dissociative Identity Disorder. A friend of mine completed a simple questionnaire to test for Dissociative Identity Disorder. Her score indicated she had D.I.D. She re-did the test later and her score was so different that it suggested she did not have D.I.D. If you have Dissociative Identity Disorder, this is just the confusing thing you would expect, because at different times a different mix of alters is likely to be out and so there will be a different degree of awareness of issues you face and how you behave. Consequently, even while striving to be totally honest, you might answer the same questions differently on various occasions. So even if you only sometimes think you might have D.I.D., that in itself is a significant clue that you could indeed have Dissociative Identity Disorder. Until alters feel comfortable with revealing themselves to you and you feel comfortable about hearing from them, your very lack of awareness of your alters will, of necessity, make it seem to you as if you do not have Dissociative Identity Disorder. We have seen that in seeking to present to the world an image of normality – and so protect the person from ridicule, or worse – alters have a vested interest in keeping their hosts ignorant of anything about them that might suggest Dissociative Identity Disorder. There is yet another complication, however: even alters who are desperate to unburden themselves and tell the host the truth, are often too scared to do so. The most common reasons are: 1. their abuser threatened awful things would happen if ever they told 2. another alter thinks it unwise to tell the host and silences the alter 3. or the alter tried in the past to speak and was deeply hurt by the host’s refusal to believe the alter. It is common to be so unaware of alters as to unknowingly have a history of suppressing alters and/or belittling them and/or betraying their confidence. This would make them understandably reluctant to reveal themselves to you. Another possible reason for their reluctance could be that they think that by keeping you in the dark they are sparing you from stress. Such reasons can cause them to be more open in talking to certain other people than to you. They are much more likely to communicate with you once they gain confidence that you will accept them and be kind to them and will not betray them by blabbing to anyone else what they tell you in confidence. (You are likely to later be able to help them feel safe about you telling some trustworthy person but do not do so without their permission.) They also need to believe that you will not freak out or refuse to believe them if they tell you things about your past that you are currently unaware of and seem inconsistent with your current perception of your past. The best way to help them trust you is for you to reassure them that you have changed your attitude towards them. At first, you are likely to have little way of knowing when they are able to hear you. So it is best to speak out loud on several different occasions on the off-chance that they might be able to hear you; giving them the assurances they need. We have established that alters are often intent on keeping their host from realizing they have D.I.D. and/or refuse to communicate with their hosts. This would be serious enough if it were the only internal factor acting in the early stages of the healing against accepting a Dissociative Identity Disorder diagnosis but there is another powerful force driving a people to reject an accurate D.I.D. diagnosis: hosts themselves are strongly biased to keep pushing from their consciousness any awareness of anything that might suggest Dissociative Identity Disorder. From childhood, pushing unpleasant truths from their minds has been their primary way of coping with a life that has been so extreme that their very survival is remarkable. That makes dismissing unwanted truths from one’s mind both a deeply entrenched habit and a fundamental aspect of Dissociative Identity Disorder. Once refusing to accept unwanted truths becomes an ingrained habit, however, it continues long after it ceased to be an appropriate coping strategy. So if you have Dissociative Identity Disorder, then by trying to live in denial of having it, you are merely continuing to employ your time-worn means of coping. To heal, however, you will need to break that habit, which can seem as scary for you as a heroin addict trying to survive without drugs. As a desperate child, you could do little else but push from your mind the truth about the hopelessness of your predicament. You are no longer a child, however, and your maturity means your situation is no longer hopeless. You must now make up for lost time by forcing yourself to face reality full-on, so that you can end the nightmare that living in denial perpetuates. If you kept spending more money than you earned, every day that you refused to face the need to budget, the more serious the financial crisis would become. If you were lost and heading in the wrong direction, to push on as if everything were okay would keep taking you further and further from safety. If your car began making an unusual noise, ignoring it could turn a minor repair into a needlessly expensive, inconvenient, and even dangerous, experience. I could keep piling on example after example, but surely there is no need to risk boring you by drawing from the well of countless more examples. The stark fact of life is that living in denial is the highway to disaster. If understanding the problem is essential to finding the solution, then refusing to acknowledge the problem perpetuates the problem. If the truth sets us free, then keeping ourselves ignorant keeps us imprisoned in a self-imposed dungeon of despair. As enticing as it seems, living in denial ruins our lives by perpetuating the problem and, almost invariably, intensifying it. Moreover, living in denial is contrary to the God of truth who loves you so passionately that he longs not to dominate you but for you to co-operate with him in saving you from your dilemma. For more on this, see The Danger of Living in Denial: When is Positive Confession Living in Denial? Writes a friend of mine: I am in complete denial that I have Dissociative Identity Disorder – until I hear my alters! Then the reality comes and I am sickened, terrified and overwhelmed. I could no longer pretend when I received my therapist’s diagnosis. Before then, I hid every piece of evidence I could. I burned writings that I found placed in my journal. I tried ripping them up and throwing them in the trash but not even that was enough. Just knowing they were torn up in the trash scared me. So I burned them, hoping that the ashes would disappear, along with my actions of having ever written them. I had been labeled so many things as a child and I was determined that this label was not going to be me – whoever me was. I knew I struggled with my identity but to be diagnosed with D.I.D. was like death to me. It spun me to the ground. The more I ignored it, the less control I felt and the more in control I felt I needed to be. So I controlled the only thing I knew . . . food. I refused to eat and so did my parts. I wanted to wither away like the ashes. I wanted to disappear into nobody. I had heard voices all my life. That was normal for me. I accepted it and lived with it. The diagnosis was just another thing to hide. Yet the reality is, I have D.I.D. The day I finally wrote down the names of my alters and looked at the list, and stared at their ages and could not erase them from my mind was when I somewhat accepted this reality. Do I still have doubts? Yes! When I’m through with a session with my therapist and she asks me if I want to know who she spoke with, I say, “No, that’s okay . . .” I walk away knowing something went on in the office. I feel the effects of it but choose to deny the facts. Leesa (All quotes are given by the permission of the authors, using whatever name they preferred to provide. Quotes are sometimes slightly touched up to improve readability.) Since living in denial is the basic cause of D.I.D., it is hardly surprising that healing hinges on a radical change of mindset. One must fight the strong temptation to keep running from unpleasant truths. People can fear a cancer diagnosis so much that they keep putting off getting a lump checked by a doctor. These days, however, the greatest danger is delaying treatment. One’s fear of cancer can end up turning an easily treatable condition into something that is genuinely scary. So it is with Dissociative Identity Disorder: what is scary is not a D.I.D. diagnosis, but continuing through life without realizing that one has D.I.D. Once one accepts the truth, one can take precautions to make one’s life safer and begin to heal. Every moment’s delay prolongs one’s discomfort and wastes one’s enormous potential. Almost all my life, I have been plagued by an undiagnosed chronic-fatigue-like ailment that has greatly restricted me. I have ached for a diagnosis because it would explain why I have been this way. In addition, I might at last get some treatment that would improve my quality of life. Likewise, if you have Dissociative Identity Disorder, the diagnosis will eventually bring great relief by finally explaining many things about yourself that have always puzzled you. In addition to explaining things about yourself that have always puzzled you, accepting a correct diagnosis will finally allow you to heal. And the healing it offers does not even require medication, so there will be no side effects. Some friends share their experiences: I once suddenly felt very dizzy and needed to sit on the floor of my hallway. Then I heard in my head “Where am I? What is this place?” Compared to the stress I was going through at the time, this experience, although surprising and strange, made me feel diverted and removed from the pain I had been experiencing. I thought it was real in a way, but I also thought I was playacting or being melodramatic. Even with the dizziness and the voice inside my head, it still felt so mild – like just an acting out of extreme stress, as a hypochondriac might do. I thought, “I’m just having younger times of my life dredged up because of all this stress. It’s just taking this dramatic form of D.I.D., because I would find that more exciting and diversionary than cold hard reality.” I thought I was escaping reality by fantasizing having D.I.D., in order to be pleasantly distracted. (Boy does that sound crazy!) But it did just seem to come out of the blue; not as if I had planned it. Although unexpected, it brought tremendous mental relief and I liked talking with those parts inside my head. It felt like coming home, and something that was doable, in contrast to everything else at the time that was causing me to feel so isolated from myself and having no relief. Alison After asking me a lot of questions, someone told me I might have Dissociative Identity Disorder. I was in shock! I had previously heard a little about D.I.D. and used to think, “I’m glad that’s not me.” I would have never thought I had D.I.D. After all, I thought I had a pretty normal childhood. Um. I guess not. It took me a couple of months of sessions with counselors to really accept it. When I saw things happening and parts coming forward that were verified, I knew it must be real. Knowing it was real was actually more calming than not knowing. At last I had a name for what was happening. At first, it is upsetting and overwhelming to hear the words Dissociative Identity Disorder, but after a while, it’s confirming. To know one has Dissociative Identity Disorder is stressful, but then to get confirmation, is relieving. At least you know how to pursue healing. This isn’t a diagnosis or an answer that one initially wants to hear. It takes a while to accept, but if it’s affirmed, I have found it can be very helpful. Noel When I first heard about Dissociative Identity Disorder (back then it was called Multiple Personality Disorder – M.P.D.) I thought nothing of it. In my understanding, I did not have the condition. Yet others kept pointing out alters that would communicate with them. Church members would make small comments about my personalities and moods or behaviors that would change. Despite people’s comments, however, I was continually in denial of it because I was unaware of my parts. The more I wanted to avoid the diagnosis, however, the more that people seemed to point out usual things I would do at very inappropriate times. It was very overwhelming and even a shock to me when I did a short test for D.I.D. and discovered I had marked over half of the checks on the list. I wished and wished the test was inaccurate or that maybe if I didn’t say anything to anyone else and I put up my guard, then other people might not make any more remarks. I was mistaken, and my little alters got hurt as well as myself. I think the only way I came to this place of acceptance was the Lord himself, as he brought people along my path that were familiar with Dissociative Identity Disorder. It helps to have others encourage you. When a therapist told me, “You have Dissociative Identity Disorder and we want to get you the proper help.” I was terrified. All kinds of questions ran through my head, “Will I be okay? What is wrong? Am I crazy or something?” I was frightened to know the real truth and to accept it, so it was easier for me to doubt it. God seemed to help me greatly through this struggle as he tenderly reminded me how much he loved my little ones. I shied away from it. I couldn’t figure God out, either, because I was not aware of my little alters. But one day, it dawned on me that perhaps the therapist and God were right and I needed to take a closer look. I was relieved to discover that D.I.D. is more common than I had assumed and that I wasn’t crazy but that, due to all the abuse and trauma I had endured through multiple abuses, I now had a gift of protective, highly talented alters who had held my pain for me so that I did not have to when I had been abused as a child. I had to learn to accept this but it took some time, patience and God loving me and my little alters through it all. I slowly came to grips with the fact that this was not too big for God and that he could restore us. This is what began to break down the denial. It turns out that I do not regret coming to grips with the condition. Lynn The frightening dilemma is that closing one’s mind to unpleasant truths, and so continually worsening things, becomes an ingrained habit – an unthinking reaction. So when someone presumes that a Dissociative Identity Disorder diagnosis is unpleasant, the time-worn method of denial and perpetuating the problem is seized. This tendency must be fought with everything you have. Every moment of your future hinges on you breaking this habit and facing reality. In reality, a Dissociative Identity Disorder diagnosis seems scary only when a person is unsure of the implications. Few people understand D.I.D., and most have wild ideas about it, but any normal person who truly understands would be excited to be diagnosed with D.I.D. It means wonderful things are ahead. It opens amazing opportunities for personal development and advancement. It paves the way to peace, wholeness and fulfillment. If you have Dissociative Identity Disorder, you have already survived the worse of it. Your very openness to the possibility of having D.I.D. means that life should now begin to get better than you have ever known (unless you were to complicate things by again living in denial of D.I.D.). Don’t waste your life. Don’t let bad people win. You had no choice when you were little. Back then, they were so much stronger than you and their lies seemed so believable. Today, however, you are no longer a child; no longer helpless and easily duped. Those days are gone forever. Stop frittering your life away in unnecessary inner pain, despair and defeatism. Lift up your eyes and let God inspire you. The Almighty believes in you. Keep asking him for his passion for truth, victory, healing and wholeness. Like the ancient Israelites, it is up to you whether you keep wandering in the wilderness or enter the Promised Land divinely prepared for you. It takes courage to enter into all of the blessings and fulfillment and achievements God longs to lavish upon you. As with the Israelites, it is simply a matter of faith – believing that because God is on your side you can do it. You don’t even have to believe in yourself. Simply believe that God is not so pathetically weak that your weakness could ever negate his power. Fear feels so oppressively real but it is just a feeling; not reality. Take God’s hand and walk through the open door. Yet another hindrance to accepting a D.I.D. diagnosis is that you cannot expect your experience to exactly match that of other people who have Dissociative Identity Disorder. Writes another friend of mine: At times I don’t feel I have Dissociative Identity Disorder, even though several therapists see it. It’s not that I want to deny it but it’s that, unlike some people, I don’t wake up to find I’ve done something I wasn’t aware of or I find writings I don’t recognize. There are times, however, when I don’t remember doing things with my husband that he insists I did; but I tend to chalk it up simply to being forgetful. My “forgetfulness” doesn’t happen often – maybe once a week, with some weeks having no “forgetfulness” and other weeks having more. What I do know, however, is when I acknowledge what I feel inside and act accordingly, I find so much more peace inside. Like any family unit, there will be rough times too. Imagine having a fractured leg. There are varying degrees. There is a crushing injury, a compound fracture, a simple fracture, or a hairline fracture. They are all fractures that need to be treated back to health. We all need healing regardless of how bad the injury. Angie For possible indicators of D.I.D., here’s a quote from one of my main webpages about D.I.D., Powerful Answers & Surprising Help for People Traumatized as Children: How Can You Know if You Have an Alter? Should you have alters, becoming aware of this fact is unlikely to be easy. After all, they formed to keep things from you. Moreover, needless fears and misconceptions about the implications of having alters cause most people’s minds to recoil from the thought of having alters. The result is high psychological pressure for people with alters to remain unaware of their alters. So despite all the healing advantages of finding that you have alters, things are stacked against you discovering them. Winning the trust of a terrified jackrabbit might be less of a challenge, but the only sure way to discover alters is to so win their confidence that they decide to talk to you regularly. Until alters feel safe to do this, you can only look for vague clues. Should you have alters, do not expect to have any awareness of, at best, more than a few of the symptoms mentioned below. Although some people with alters have obvious gaps in their memory of the distant past, there are some who, even before healing begins, have a more detailed and complete memory of their childhood than average people who have never had alters. This is because alters do not necessarily retain sole memory of certain events. What they keep to themselves (until they begin to heal) is the deepest emotional reaction to certain traumatic events. Rather than mere facts, it is particularly emotional ownership of these events that they keep from the rest of the person. So people with undetected alters might not necessarily have missing years. They might, however, have the occasional missing moment in everyday life that cannot be attributed to alcohol or drugs. They might, for instance, lose keys or other personal items and find them in places where they cannot recall putting them. Other possibilities include goods appearing that they cannot recall purchasing, inexplicable bank account withdrawals, finding themselves somewhere with no recollection of how they got there, or having no memory of doing things in the recent past that other people claim to have witnessed them doing. Sometimes people with alters discover that they can protect themselves from self-harm or other unwanted behavior by hiding from themselves knives, credit cards or whatever. They know where they placed the objects, and yet putting them in an unusual place works when an alter does not observe the hiding. If you have sole access to your computer, check History on your Internet Browser to see if you have visited websites you cannot recall having seen. If you retain electronic copies of sent emails, check them to see if you recognize them all. An itemized phone bill, credit card account, or anything else tracking your actions might also be revealing. Of course, we all have memory lapses but with alters, lapses are usually more pronounced than for most people. Some people have even feared Alzheimer’s, when their lapses were simply due to a suppressed part of the person taking over for a while and doing and thinking things that it keeps hidden from the rest of the person. It is tragically common for people with alters to be called liars when their denials are simply because they genuinely don't remember certain things. Until healing progresses, alters are particularly active when the rest of the person is asleep. You could wake up to find things moved. It might just be sleepwalking but it could be more. I provide e-mail support for abuse survivors. With several different survivors I have suddenly received an e-mail that seems out of character for that person. Besides the subject matter seeming unusual, the grammar and spelling is often more childlike than their usual standard. Sometimes I initially thought that maybe the person wrote the e-mail while under the influence of drugs or alcohol but often it turns out that it is the child part of them temporarily taking over. When I send a copy of the e-mail to the person, he or she is often shocked, having no recollection of having ever written it. Had the correspondence been handwritten, most likely there would be a noticeable change in handwriting. So another clue to the presence of alters is changes in handwriting in, for example, one’s journal. In fact, keeping a journal is a good idea, especially doing so at different times of the day (different times and situations are more likely to reveal different alters). You might be surprised what you find later when re-reading your journal. Some adult survivors sometimes find themselves acting in a childlike way. They might, for example, have a collection of children’s toys. Again, to some extent, we all have times when we act a little childlike, but when it is more pronounced, it could be the inner child temporarily making he/she presence felt. Another possible indicator of an alter is sometimes having certain abilities and sometimes not. You might, for example, have created artwork or poems of a standard far beyond what you think yourself capable of. Or you might be mystified as to why you are occasionally unable to do something – perhaps to spell or read music or some other skill – that at other times you can easily do. Since she was seven, a friend of mine was hopeless at mathematics and yet she kept getting high marks in the subject. She could ace a test, go home and find herself quite unable to solve simple math problems. At college she elected to complete the same algebra course with the same teacher not once, not twice but three times because, despite continually getting high grades, she didn’t have a clue about the subject. Determined not to let it beat her, she even tried to do the course a fourth time, but her teacher forbade her on the grounds that she was too good at the subject to keep repeating it. It was not until she was in her late thirties that she discovered an alter of hers, formed at age seven, who not only specialized in mathematics but who, out of fear of being pushed aside by other parts of the person, deliberately kept the rest of the person mathematically ignorant. Another possible clue is having extended times in which one feels unreal, as if in a dream or not really there. Some describe it as like observing everything from behind a glass wall. It is known as co-consciousness. Another possibility, is sometimes thinking of oneself as “we” or “us,” or feeling as if there is another person inside of you. Hearing voices that seem to come from inside you is yet another possibility. What these voices say could seem a little strange – as might be expected from someone who has suffered bizarre and terrifying abuse – but, in contrast to people with certain other conditions, the voices are relatively rational and sane. Another clue is occasionally having two conflicting emotions; perhaps, for example, feeling happy and yet deep inside feeling sad and trapped. All of the above are common symptoms of what therapists call Dissociative Identity Disorder (D.I.D.). Not everyone has every symptom and any supposed symptoms should only be regarded as clues, not diagnostic proof. For example, an embarrassed woman confided to a friend of mine that she kept losing her keys. “What is emotionally upsetting you?” asked my discerning friend. The problem turned out not to be D.I.D., nor Alzheimer’s, but simply a reaction to stress. There are questionnaire-type psychological tests designed to diagnose D.I.D. They can only be administered by professionals and are expensive. See Psychological Tests to Diagnose Dissociative Identity Disorder. Regardless of whether you have Dissociative Identity Disorder, a valuable help in inner healing is to keep a journal in which you record dreams, flashes of memory, feelings, guesses as to what might be distressing you, and so on. Prayerfully doing this over quite a while is likely to clarify things for you and help you better discern what is troubling you. Keep pushing forward with treating yourself as if you had D.I.D. At the very least it should help you get to know yourself better.

Your Amazing Potential if you have Dissociative Identity Disorder Of course, not everyone has every ability, but people with Dissociative Identity Disorder are likely to feel certain they do not have certain abilities and yet have those very abilities locked away in a part of their brain that is currently controlled by another alter. These abilities could already be quite developed but if not, they can be developed at remarkable speed. I am not sure that you can grasp how passionately I wish I had a fraction of the potential for intellectual development found in people who are beginning to discover their alters. For me to not have Dissociative Identity Disorder but to know so many people who do, is like a starving person who cannot eat, acting as waiter at a feast. I would be out of my skin with excitement if I discovered I had alters. The possibilities are almost limitless and will vary from person to person but the following are some examples that someone with Dissociative Identity Disorder might discover. By connecting with his or her alters, a person might end up with remarkably improved: * Eyesight * Manual dexterity * Ability to use the non-dominant hand * Surefootedness, such as ability to climb rugged terrain * Athletic ability * Short-term or long-term memory * Musical ability * Speed reading skills * Creative cooking * Mathematical ability * Direction finding and navigational skills * Ability to thoroughly enjoy marital relations * Grammar and spelling * Creative writing * A flair for public speaking * Sense of humor * Linguistic ability * Artistic ability * Dress sense * Parenting skills * Ability to handle stress * People skills * Freedom from certain phobias * Spiritual abilities such as spiritual warfare * Special experiences with God I have no idea which of the above list will apply to you but there are sure to be at least several.

Do People With Dissociative Identity Disorder (D.I.D.) Have Superior Brains? M.P.D. Does Multiple Personality Disorder (M.P.D.) Increase One’s Intellectual Powers? Introduction: Helping people who would like to read this to actually find it, is more challenging than for most topics. Although Dissociative Identity Disorder is the more fashionable term, some people have only heard of multiple personalities or Multiple Personality Disorder. A further complication is that some would type into a search engine only the abbreviation, and some would use periods, and some not, and some using spaces and some not, thus giving eight more options (D.I.D., D. I.; D.;, DID, D I; D;, M.P.D., M. P.; D.;, MPD, M P; D;). Still more perplexing is that search engines tend to give priority to webpages that mention a term several times. As you read the following, you will see how this has influenced my writing style. If I could find the time, I’d engage in scientific research to confirm my conviction that Multiple Personality Disorder (Dissociative Identity Disorder) develops one’s brain far beyond what it would normally have been. Of course, no sane person would want anyone to suffer the trauma that causes Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) and until healing commences, D.I.D. is more of a handicap than an advantage, but I believe that ultimately a person can enjoy intellectual advantages from having had multiple personalities. Athletes focus on developing their bodies to perform at a level far beyond what they would otherwise achieve. Genetic factors aside, most people vary in their speed, strength, stamina and health, not so much because of deliberate training but primarily because of circumstances, such as the type of job they end up in. Just as the performance our bodies can achieve varies according to deliberate or accidental training or circumstances, so it is with our brains. In fact, no part of our bodies is capable of being improved by training or circumstances more than the brain. In psychology, learning has been defined as creating a permanent change in the brain. To understand how having multiple personalities (Dissociative Identity Disorder) could end up an intellectual advantage, consider this analogy: Imagine a laborer daily working in a job that involves moderately heavy lifting. His fellow workers use both arms for the task but he is forced to use only one. Since the load is not shared between each arm, each time he lifts, his lifting arm is effectively bearing twice the weight than borne by the arms of his fellow workers. The muscles in that one arm would therefore end up not only developing more than those in his other arm but stronger than the arm of any of his fellow workers. Now suppose that although he was allowed only to use one arm each time he lifted he was permitted to sometimes use his left arm and sometimes his right. Each arm would grow unusually strong because each time he lifts, one arm must bear the full weight, but in this scenario he will end up with superior strength in not just one arm but both. While he is unable to use both arms together, however, he has little advantage over his fellow workers and often a disadvantage, since using only one arm is awkward. But suppose after a year or so of lifting this way he is allowed to use both arms. He would then be able to lift heavier loads and achieve more than those who had always used both arms. This is how I believe it is, intellectually, with people with Dissociative Identity Disorder (D.I.D.). For years they have had to perform mental tasks, one alter at a time, thus being forced to use only a portion of their full intellectual capacity at any given time. This puts them at a significant disadvantage to other people. Like lifting with one arm, each part of the brain controlled by a specific alter is forced to develop beyond the corresponding part of the average person’s brain. If, after years of this, the person begins to heal from Multiple Personality Disorder (M.P.D.) so that alters begin to work together – thus allowing the person to access different parts of the brain simultaneously – one would expect the person to then have greater intellectual power than if he or she had never had multiple personalities (MPD), just like the laborer who finally gets to use both arms. One reason for believing that having multiple personalities affects the very structure of the brain is the very age at which Dissociative Identity Disorder (D. I.; D.;) commences. When neuro-scientists speak of the plasticity of the brain, they mean the ability of the brain to undergo change, move functions from one part of the brain to another, adapt to brain injury, and so on. Research confirms that although older brains have more plasticity than was once thought, the brain’s plasticity is greatest in babies and thereafter slowly declines through the years. (Just one outworking of this is the well-known fact that the younger a person is, the easier it is to learn a new language.) People with Dissociative Identity Disorder (D I; D;) usually have their first alter at a time when they were little children or babies – at a time when their brains were particularly capable of significant “re-wiring” and anatomical changes. Psychologists keen to understand how the brain works and what it is capable of, have paid much attention to studying people who are bilingual. An observation they consider significant is instances in which bilingual people have suffered an injury to the brain that causes them to lose an entire language and yet their ability to use the other language has remained intact. I think findings concerning bilingual people are relevant to people with Multiple Personality Disorder (M P; D;) because it seems likely that having multiple personalities would cause various skills, abilities and knowledge to be duplicated and stored in separate parts of the brain, similar to what apparently happens when learning a second language. One alter, for example, was formed in her twenties without the ability to read and write. She had to teach herself these skills all over again. If this was the genuine learning from scratch that it seems, then this woman has the ability to read and write stored in two separate parts of her brain. If so, then extrapolating from the findings concerning bilingual people, it is a good guess that if she were to suffer a brain tumor, head injury or stroke, her chances of one of the parts of her brain storing this ability being unaffected would be higher than would for people who have never had Dissociative Identity Disorder. A friend of mine, when in her twenties, nearly died from an infection that caused a dangerously high body temperature to rage for several consecutive days. Thereafter, her short-term memory was significantly impaired. Years later, as she began to understand Dissociative Identity Disorder, she discovered young alters that were exceptionally good not only at remembering events from years ago but with recalling numbers and so on encountered just minutes ago. By gaining the help of these alters, her ability to perform tasks that required short-term memory skyrocketed. This same woman had a poor sense of smell but discovered younger alters who had a much better sense of smell. She found that a younger alter could smell something and transfer to the host exactly what it smelt like. I presume that in both cases the parts of the brain habitually accessed by the host had been slightly impaired, whereas those parts accessed by the younger alters still functioned well. Creativity is of immense importance not just in the arts but in scientific advance, inventions and problem solving in every imaginable field of endeavor. It is well established that children are usually more creative than adults. The experience of people with Multiple Personality Disorder (M. P.; D.;) suggests that through their child alters, are much more able to tap into their creativity than if they had not suffered this disorder. My observations of people with multiple personalities also suggest that they are unusually skilled at multi-tasking. A young alter wrote in an e-mail apologizing for the spelling, explaining that her host was busy and unable to help her. My curiosity raised, I asked what her host had been doing. She replied that while she had been e-mailing, another alter was on the phone to a second person and yet another alter was working on figures and Instant Messaging the figures to a third person. At the same time she was handling interruptions from a fourth person who was with her in person. Her only restriction was that she had just one set of hands. She had the phone on her shoulder, and kept alternating between typing a little of the email while mentally working in the Instant Messaging, and then swapping to typing the Instant Messaging while mentally working on the e-mail. People who have seen this woman at work have been flabbergasted, but I expect that many others with multiple personalities could do equally amazing multi-tasking. Another thing I have observed in people with Dissociative Identity Disorder is that if a particular alter has been working long, stressful hours that would exhaust anyone, that alter will take a day’s rest and ask other alters to take over while the tired one is recuperating. What is happening here? The person is still working. I believe it is like someone lugging a heavy bag in one hand. When that arm tires, he swaps hands and keeps going, feeling refreshed even though he is still carrying the bag. It seems that by swapping alters, people with Dissociative Identity Disorder are able to swap the part of the brain that has tired for another part that is relatively fresh. That’s a valuable ability that I expect few other people have. So, although it is only a guess on my part, it might be that Dissociative Identity Disorder could give a person extra stamina. If you were using your right arm to perform a skilled task for hours at a time, it would be a real advantage if you could give yourself a break by swapping arms. This would depend, however, on whether the part of your brain controlling your left arm has developed the necessary skills. It likely to me that not only muscles, but parts of the brain, can tire after hours of concentrated effort. So if someone with D.I.D. had developed different parts of the brain to perform the same task (mathematical calculations, for example) then when one part of the brain tires, the person could switch to using another, fresher part of the brain to continue the task, whereas other people would have to stop or would become less efficient at the task. D.I.D. I see Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality Disorder) as like splitting a computer into several smaller computers and then having to maximize the efficiency and programming of each computer in an attempt to match the performance of people who have larger computers. I see healing from Dissociative Identity Disorder (D I; D;) as linking each computer so that a super computer is formed. This is not merely restoring the brain to what it would have been had fracturing not occurred, but taking the brain beyond that level because the fracturing had forced each part of the brain to develop more than that part of the brain would have done had there been no fracturing. This is why I believe that having multiple personalities (M. P.; D.;) can end up producing a brain that is superior to what it would otherwise have been. I have permission to share the following with you from someone commenting on this webpage. Your webpage really fascinated me! I say this, not because I feel that I personally have a superior brain, because I’ve always felt quite stupid. I never thought of multi-tasking as being related to D.I.D. I’ve been told most of my life that I can multi-task like no one else. Even though, by nature, women are often better at it than men, I’ve been told by women that I can do it in a way they can only dream of. My dad one time told me that he was sure I’d no idea what he’d just said to me because not only was I listening to him, I was also having a conversation with my three-year-old daughter, my mother and my sister. All different conversations were going on simultaneously. As well as this, I was baking and looking in the cook book for instructions, plus I was texting my husband on my phone. So I repeated back to my dad what he had said to me and I answered his question for a second time. I was also able to repeat back to my mom, sister and daughter what they had been saying to me and answer my daughter’s questions, plus show him that the text I sent my husband wasn’t messed up in anyway at all and neither was the stuff that I was baking. My dad sat there in amazement! My mom, sister and daughter all knew I could do that, so they never thought anything about it. So, I guess, with that in mind, maybe we who have D.I.D. do have superior minds, although I’ve never felt that I do, in any way, shape, or form! The following is where it gets really weird in that it turns out she is clearly far more intelligent than she had been indicating – so much so that, like me, you will probably feel intellectually inferior to her. What is significant, however, is that she saw herself as unintelligent, in fact, “stupid”. This is very common with people with Dissociative Identity Disorder for two reasons. One, they usually receive such putdowns from their abusers that their self-esteem has been brutally crushed. Two, as hinted at below, by alters remaining isolated from each other they often do not realize they only have limited awareness of all the abilities other parts of them have. She writes: I was a horrible student in class all of my adolescent years! There were a few subjects that I excelled at, most of those being some sort of art (drawing, painting, sculpting, etc.) or music. My primary instrument is the violin. From when I was only twelve years old right through to ending upon high school graduation at age eighteen, I was the “student teacher” and substitute orchestra teacher/conductor, for my orchestra. I also play the piano, string bass & bass guitar, as well as cello, viola, flute, clarinet, French horn, trumpet, trombone and trap set drums. I can play just about any instrument handed to me. I was always good at writing, drama, debate and public speaking. Although I was always an extremely shy person, some part of me comes to life when I’m on stage – a part that is usually hidden away somewhere. I was horrible at Math and Science, although I’ve always loved certain sciences, like Astronomy. I absolutely love Astronomy! I also enjoy Archeology. One day when I was in my mid-twenties, however, it was just like the whole Math & Science thing “turned on” for me! They both made a whole lot more sense than they ever had before. Now, I know that it was actually one of my parts – that’s what my counsellor calls alters. I now call on this part when I need help with Math. Apparently she always loved Math and Science. Unlike me, she could understand it completely. It was amazing when she finally stepped up to the plate and started to do those for me!