(July 16, 2011 at 9:02 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Nick, apply your statement to the verse in question. While you're at it, what gives you the impression that the NT is about our "internal lives" as opposed to our "external lives"?
(late edit) It's ok to be openly christian here btw, you can quote the scriptures which led you to this conclusion.
I presume you are referring to Ephesians 6:
5 Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. 6 Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. 7 Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, 8 because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free.
*****************
Now compare it to Romans 7
14 We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[c] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
21 So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.
********************
Jesus' description of the "world" is the same as Plato's Cave. This is a condition of inner slavery through psychological blindness. For a person beginning to become aware of the human condition as it exists within them and the world, the question becomes more how to awaken to reality rather than fight shadows on the wall in Plato's cave.
Christianity is the reliigion of slaves. Its devolution into Christrendom or what you define as Christianity in society has devolved it into a religion of power. A Christian has come to experience that they are the wretched man and would rather awaken than fight shadows. A Christian knows they are either a slave to what pins them to the world, or higher influences they cannot understand but can provide the inner light tht leads to conscious inner freecom.
This is similar to the Eastern concept of "attachment." Acquiring a higher, conscious perspective requires help from above. In Christianity this help is called grace
