The Pain Principle: Relationships and Reconciliation

We can avoid ongoing emotional pain by following God’s way, or we can manage ongoing emotional pain by supporting Satan’s agenda to replace God. Following God’s way leads to fellowship with God. Fellowship with God avoids emotional pain and leads to emotional fulfillment. Supporting Satan’s agenda disrupts fellowship with God. Satan’s agenda needs emotional pain to open separation from God. Our sinful nature uses systematic sins to manage emotional pain by filling the emptiness of separation from God. Systematic sins provide temporary relief from emotional pain.  Avoid Emotional Pain by Following God’s Way God’s way is the pursuit of excellence in our relationships with others to build up the body of Christ. God’s way needs priorities, values, and behavior that acknowledge the goodness of a just and loving God. God’s way reaches out for unity by inclusion. God’s way uses the synergy of Christ-like humility and compassion as an immune system to restore and protect our emotional and spiritual health. God’s way fights the evil within us and around us.  Manage Emotional Pain by Supporting Satan’s Agenda Satan’s agenda influences believers and unbelievers to destroy the lives of believers and weaken the body of Christ. Satan’s agenda needs us to doubt God’s goodness and to rely on self-serving priorities and values. Satan’s agenda needs unity by exclusion to block God’s plan for relationships and reconciliation. Satan’s agenda needs arrogance and indifference to motivate self-serving behavior to manage emotional pain. Satan’s agenda to replace God takes advantage of the evil within us and around us. The choice between God’s way and Satan’s agenda is about resolving the conflict between good and evil within us. Justice, mercy, and faithfulness represent the good within us. Injustice, cruelty, and betrayal represent the evil within us. God’s way looks for what can we give to others. Satan’s agenda is about what can we take from others. We are chosen by the grace of God to have the option to answer his call or not. We need to choose whom to serve, God or Satan. When we let the Holy Spirit direct our lives, then we want to do what is pleasing to a just and loving God. When we do what is right, we have less time to do what is wrong. We need the humility to trust God and the compassion to obey God as the foundation for setting our priorities and values. The basic issues that frame a discussion of priorities and values begin with a belief that God does or does not exist. If we believe that God does exist, then we need to consider answers to the following questions: • Is God a just God? • Is God a loving God? • Does Satan exist? • How does God want believers and unbelievers to interact? • Is there life after death? This simplified set of questions can be recast and amended to be more general or more detailed. However, God-pleasing priorities and values in The Pain Principle book series assumes that God is a just and loving God, that Satan does exist, that believers in a just and loving God want to do for others what they want others to do for them, and that there is life after death, which offers more than life before death. After comparing our implicit or explicit understanding of theological abstractions with our perceptions of earthly realities, we make the choice to accept unity by inclusion or unity by exclusion. We can follow God’s way as a believer in a just and loving God, we can support Satan’s agenda as an unbeliever in a just and loving God, or we can look for what we think is something else. If we reject God’s way, we allow Satan to limit our freedom to choose. Our sinful nature makes the choice of God’s way difficult to make and maintain. Self-control is our ability to control our sinful nature. Self-control, not self-interest, gives us freedom to choose. Self-control blocks Satan’s influence on our sinful nature. Loss of self-control gives Satan access to our sinful nature. Satan wants to control our life and negate our freedom to choose. God offers self-control as a fruit of the Holy Spirit so that we can have the freedom to choose. Our freedom to choose recognizes God as our creator and the existence of evil within us. All believers in Jesus Christ as the Lamb of God receive eternal life. A loving God wants everyone to be a believer. God loved the world so much that He sent Jesus so that everyone who believes in Jesus as the Christ has eternal life. The decision to believe also implies the option not to believe. Eventually, a just God passes judgment to separate the believers from the unbelievers. Eternal reward redeems believers. Eternal punishment damns unbelievers. Our priorities and values are a filter for our interpretation of the written and spoken word. Our choice of words implies what our priorities and values are. From analysis of how others use words, we can infer what their priorities and values are. Pride and disobedience need self-serving priorities and values that cloud the mind and harden the heart against the gospel of Jesus Christ. Priorities and values without a just God have no inherent requirement to love others and can be self-serving priorities and values that accept unity by exclusion and the greed-is-good paradigm of Satan’s agenda to replace God. Priorities and values consistent with God’s way are not compatible with the corrupt priorities and values that support Satan’s agenda. When business decisions replace the application of moral values pleasing to God, the self-serving doctrines that support the greed-is-good paradigm of Satan’s agenda replace God-pleasing decision criteria. Various doctrines attempt to explain, limit, and excuse what God does and does not do. Unity by inclusion allows believing that Jesus Christ died for everyone. Unity by exclusion implies that Jesus Christ died for some, but not everyone.