What I believe about loss

I believe that God is the only creator. I believe that everything that exists came from God. (I don’t believe that sin, error, evil, etc. come from God. I believe that information comes from God in the correct order [which is truth], but I believe that Satan and others with sinful nature can and will rearrange that information into error, evil, etc.) I believe that everything that exists belongs to God. I believe that there is only one owner, and that is God. I believe that God gives to His intelligent creatures tasks and responsibilities, for which they are accountable to Him. This is their stewardship. 

I do not believe that stewardship is an “underownership.” I do not believe that a steward owns any of the structures, qualities, abilities, authority, possessions, relationships, etc. that they have stewardship over. All of these come from God alone and belong to God alone, therefore God is the only owner. (See RH December 1, 1904, par. 4) The steward has a responsibility to use what belongs to the owner to accomplish what the owner desires for the sake of the owner and his goals. 

Why do we relate to many things as if they belong to us? Why is it that we feel personally at loss when a possession is damaged, destroyed, or stolen? It is because we unconsciously believe something about ourselves that is wrong. It is a false identity, and this false identity is that I, the creature, believe that I am a god. This is not a conscious or purposeful thought. It is unconscious to us. But it is clearly revealed in our thoughts, actions, and reactions. What happens when a creature believes they are a god? Many, many things. 

I now believe that I am my own. If I am my own, then what is done is done to me—it is personal. What others say and what others do I take as being about me—as being done to me. I respond with good feelings about myself if what they said and did was good. I respond with bad feelings about myself if what they said and did was bad. I view what they say and do in the context of how it affects me—what it does to me. My feelings are in harmony with how I view the situation affecting me. 

If I am my own, then what I give, I give from myself. If I give from myself, then what I give is mine. It is about me. And if my gift is not received well or is mistreated, I take it personally, as if what they did was against me. I believe that if my gift is not treated well, then I am not treated well, because the gift represents me. 

If I think I am a god when I am a creature, then I think I am the owner. I see “them” as my qualities, myabilities, my body, my authority, my possessions, my money, my time, my people/relationships, etc. And if or when “they” are damaged, injured, destroyed, die, or walk away, then I see it as my loss, because it/they belonged to me. 

As the owner, I own the problems as well. So, I have to figure out how to resolve the problem. I have to bring it to a successful conclusion. To do so, I have to control time, space, circumstances, situations, finances, possessions, information, people, resources, etc., none of which I can actually control. If I must control what I cannot control to fix my problems, then I cannot fix my problems, and I am left in stress and frustration. 

If I think I am a god when I am a creature, then I am entitled to worship. I believe that others must love me, accept me, be harmonious with me, treat me well, honor me, respect me, etc. As long as they do these things, I am content. But when someone will not love me, accept me, be harmonious with me, treat me well, honor me, respect me, etc., then I am personally offended. 

And as a little god, I see myself as the judge. I judge others according to my own standard, and when they don’t measure up to my standard, I condemn them (bitterness, resentment, etc.). And when I don’t measure up to my standard, I condemn myself (self-hatred, self-condemnation, etc.). 

If I think I am a god when I am a creature, I think I give love from myself, because I unconsciously see myself as the source of love. I think I have loved others with my love. I think I have cared for them with my care. I think I have understood them with my understanding. I think I have honored them with my honor, etc. And I think that they owe me a similar response in return. 

As long as they honor me when I honor them, I am okay. As long as they love me when I love them, I am okay (just like Luke 6:32-34). But if I love them, and they don’t love me back, I have a problem, because I didn’t receive what I expected. All along, I was “loving” them for what I could get from them (love in return), while thinking that I was loving them legitimately. This is an illustration of the deception of our sinful nature that unconsciously believes we are little gods. There is much more that could be said about the implications of this deception, but time and space is limited. 

What is the opposite of this problem? It is the truth that I, the creature, am a child of God. God is the source, not me. God is the owner, not me. God is the judge, not me. If I am a child of God, then I can create nothing. I can only take what He has first made available to me and then use it. I can only give what He has first given to me. I can never love anyone with my love. I can only love them with His love. I can never respect anyone with my respect. I can only respect them with His respect. I can never understand anyone with my understanding. I can only understand them with His understanding, etc. But, as a self-governing creature, I use God’s resources according to my own choice/will (which was also given to me by God), therefore I have a very real partnership with God in the process. 

I am not the owner of any capacity, quality, possession, relationship, authority, etc. All is a gift of God’s grace to me. God has given me a stewardship of these things, and as a steward, I recognize that I am not the owner. Nothing that I have and nothing that I give comes from me. It only comes through me from Him. (There are some deeper concepts that could be considered here). 

I can give no gift from myself, for I can give nothing that came from me. I have never invested in someone else with my love, my time, my care, my concern, etc. But as the steward, I have the privilege and joy of giving what came from the Owner. And I have the joy of knowing how you can be blessed by the gift that was given. 

But if you reject the gift, if you destroy the gift, if you are angry at the gift, then I hurt for you. I pity you. I am concerned for you. I recognize that you have a problem that is causing you to reject something that is good for you, and I want you to experience what is good. I see that you are not free. I see that you are held captive. And I long for your freedom and restoration. While I feel the pain of the situation, I don’t feel it for myself (I’m not thinking about how the situation affects me). I feel it for you (I’m thinking about how the situation affects you). I don’t feel personally offended because you didn’t accept the gift. It didn’t come from me anyway. It came from God. I am simply concerned about you and for you because your response shows that you have a problem that is preventing you from accepting the good that is coming through me from God. 

This is how Jesus responded in His life. He didn’t hurt for Himself, pity Himself, or feel sorry for Himself. But He very much hurt for, pitied, and felt sorry for others. He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief—not for self, but for others (With the exception of His experience of being separated from His Father as the sins of the world were laid upon Him). 

If I am a child of God—a steward—then I can never be personally at loss because I never had anything of my own to lose. That doesn’t mean that I am not subject to sorrow, anguish, etc. It is simply that the sorrow, anguish, etc. is experienced for your sake, or God’s sake, but not for my sake. If my wife denies God, begins to live a life contrary to God’s will, and then dies, then in the context where I understand that I am a child of God, that I am a steward and not an owner, I will hurt, sorrow, and be in anguish for God who is the only one that can lose anything. I will hurt, sorry, and be in anguish for my wife, who is God’s child, for I do want the best for her for her sake. But I will not hurt for myself. I will feel it, but it won’t be about what I have lost. 

It is helpful to understand that one does not go from one end of the road to the other in one leap. You cannot one day be taking everything personally, unconsciously believing that you are a god (the owner), and the next day take nothing personally, believing that you are a child of God and a steward. Yes, in any moment we will believe one or the other. But the change from consistently believing one to consistently believing the other is a process—often a very long process. 

When a loved one dies, or a spouse divorces you, do you feel personally at loss because you want to? No! You can’t help but feel that way. It is automatic. Is there any guilt for feeling like you do? Absolutely not! Does how you feel come from the truth? Or does it come from a deception? It comes from a deception. Is it possible, through the truth, to come to a place where we don’t automatically respond how we currently respond? Is it possible that we can come to the place where we don’t take things personally? I believe the answer is a resounding, Yes! I believe there is hope that we don’t have to continue to be a slave to these feelings as we have been. I believe that the truth can set us free. And I don’t believe the truth is just information. I believe the truth is also a Person—the One who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” 

Someone might say, “There is nothing wrong with how we mourn.” How can we check that statement with something that is objective to see if it is correct? I encourage you to look at what mourning does to the body. Do you see people getting healthier through morning? Or do you see them getting sicker? Do you see people having greater health after a divorce or the death of a spouse or close loved one? Or do you see them developing new diseases, or existing diseases worsening? What do you see? 

The mind can be confused and often is. The mind can be deceived and often is. The mind can be wrong and think it is right. But the body is only made of chemicals. And chemicals cannot be deceived. Nothing physical can be deceived. The chemicals of the body simply react according to fixed laws. But the mind was created to control the functions of the body. If the mind is functioning as God designed it to function, it will control the functions of the body properly, and the result is proper function (this is assuming that the fuel for the body is adequate as well, etc.). But if the mind is not functioning as God designed it to function, it will not control the functions of the body properly, and dysfunction will result. The body cannot lie. It must tell the truth of what is put into it—whether what was put into it met its needs or not. If you mourn and as a result develop disease, get sick, or your health declines as a result, you can know from the objective measure of the body that the mind was not operating according to how it was designed to operate. You can know the mind (which is subjective) is in error because you see the dysfunction coming out in the body (which is objective). 

Mark Sandoval