The General Law

I'm a Christian of what I call the hard truth, low church variety. John Bunyan, A. W. Pink, maybe a little Spurgeon thrown in, would be names that I would identify with. That means I'm a Bible believing, real biblical doctrine accepting Christian. Reformed (Reformation era) doctrine. Five Solas, Doctrines of Grace, classical Covenant - Federal - Theology, without the infant baptism because regeneration is the main thing and it is effected by the word and the Spirit, not by man and ritual. Etc. A necessary preface.

Since about 1990 after I became a Christian (important point) I have also been involved with something called 'the Work.' Or, Fourth Way. It's basically a very sophisticated language of inner, spiritual development. It's not for everybody. Many cults appropriate bits and pieces of it (just as cults appropriate the Bible). Really, though, the Work is not something you do in a group (which is the necessary setting of most if not all cults), but it's something you do in the traffic of your everyday life. That's what 'fourth way' means. It is not the way of the monk (in a monastery), or a yogi (in a...wherever yogis and their students gather) or an ascetic (who leaves the traffic of everyday life to live in a cave or on top of a mountain or something). Fourth Way means working on yourself emotionally, intellectually, and physically at the same time, in your average daily life. I won't go into that aspect more than that because you would really have to read about it on your own with your own motivation, from a book such as the Fourth Way by Ouspensky, or his smaller book the Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution (evolution in this title having nothing to do with the garbage science known as the theory of macro evolution which Ouspensky as a mathematician and thinker was an early debunker of). OK, now...

One final note on the above: the Work, or Fourth Way is a language. It is not biblical language. The two really should not be mixed. Having said that it's been called esoteric Christianity. That is not Gnosticism by another name. If you have discernment to separate wheat from chaff (only the Bible is pure wheat) it fits doctrines of grace Calvinism and progressive sanctification hand-in-glove. One warning: like any hardcore teaching and practice that involves provoking degrees of awakening it will put you in the environment of demons. That's enough to scare most all people off. So be it. You need the self-motivation and you need the armor of God (Ephesians 6:10-18).

(We're surrounded by demons, people, and when you provoke and extend your limits of consciousness, real will, and understanding you will attract attention. It's inevitable. If you don't want that or need that stay away from Work practices. You'll still be surrounded by demons though. So get the armor of God in the least...)

Now to my little note...

There is a mysterious little doctrine (I'll call it that) in Fourth Way teaching called the General Law. People in the Fourth Way have as little understanding of the General Law as most Christians have of Law and Gospel.

The General Law is seen as a force that is big and suffocating (blanketing, drowning you in it) that is negative and gives friction if you don't conform to it. A person doing the Work is taught to use it for it's valuable friction because that is how you create necessary heat to develop. Won't go into it more than that.

In biblical teaching there is the Law and the Gospel. God's law is perfect. It is not a negative thing that is a problem for us. Our fallen nature is a problem for us, not God's perfect law. Yet after the Fall of Adam God's law has been used by fallen man and fallen angels in a twisted, distorted, turned-upside-down, perverted form and way. We feel it at the social level among our fellow human beings with shaming and accusation and finger wagging; we feel it at the government level with the penal code and positive laws (criminal/civil laws), regulations, etc., coercing us, threatening us, taking our freedom, menacing us (sometimes necessarily so because of our fallen, sin nature); and we feel it at the false religion level where fallen angels administer religions designed to tyrannize and to draw people away from God towards idolatry.

It's this twisted, distorted, turned-upside-down, perverted form of God's law that is what the term the General Law means.

A person who understands the Work language and practices does battle with this General Law via self-remembering and non-identifying (among other things), terms with very exact meaning, well-defined in Work sources.

A Christian, on the other hand, who has no interest in any extra-biblical language or practice still has to do battle with the General Law as defined above. A truly regenerate Christian who truly fears God and doesn't fear the world will be confronted by the General Law.

So how does a Christian do battle with this General Law? By doing what Jesus tells us to do. The direct teaching of Jesus in the Gospels (and ALL the words of the Bible are Jesus talking to us, I'm only directing you to where Jesus specifically gives instruction on how to do battle with the General Law).

To make it very concise, you are to 'be awake' and 'love your enemy.' There is obviously a lot contained in those two practices. Or it can be put:

37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
38 This is the first and great commandment.
39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

Interactions with the General Law usually involve interactions with other human beings or groups of humans that result in feeling (or indulging) *resentment* (or also sometimes just one or another form of depression, but resentment to varying degree is usually present).

The opposite of resentment is *gratitude.* Jesus' words about love your neighbor or enemy could be put this way: have gratitude over resentment for everything all the time. This is the turn the other cheek and give your cloak as well if your coat is taken from you teaching. This is what that means. Jesus isn't saying let people kill you or let them cause you to freeze to death.

And to love God (in the moment, especially difficult moments when we are up against the General Law and feeling resentment) requires us to be awake in the moment. Very difficult to do. Yet it's part of our progressive sanctification to practice such things if we are Christians. We aren't born with such ability.

Jesus is telling us this is how you deal with the General Law, or God's Law as it is being used in a twisted, distorted, turned-upside-down way to coerce us, take our freedom from us, make us conform to worldly standards, keep us asleep in life, force us to worship idols, put us under a general tyranny...world tyranny ultimately if fallen man and fallen angels have their way.

As Christians we are free from the law as a curse. Jesus followed the law to a 't' for us and then paid the penalty of death for us on the cross. That aspect of the law we are free from, yet it is the perverted use of the law that we are confronted with in this fallen world (until glory) that we have to do wise and successful battle with. Jesus as our Commander tells us how to do this. The Work language in the sources mentioned above goes into the practice to great detail, but it's not for everybody for the reasons mentioned. Yet the fight is real and necessary for all Christians nevertheless. A regenerated Christian can't avoid the fight with the world, the flesh (our fallen nature), and the Devil.