{"id":542,"date":"2014-07-22T23:34:25","date_gmt":"2014-07-22T22:34:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meditations.kafkasworld.com\/dir\/?p=542"},"modified":"2014-07-22T23:34:25","modified_gmt":"2014-07-22T22:34:25","slug":"the-unfaithfulness-projection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2014\/07\/22\/the-unfaithfulness-projection\/","title":{"rendered":"The Unfaithfulness Projection"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Copyright 2014 by Shea Oakley<br \/>\nAll rights reserved<\/p>\n<p>God cannot be unfaithful.<\/p>\n<p>A perfect, holy and loving God, by definition, is not capable of unfaithfulness any more than He is capable of lying. His character cannot allow unfaithfulness any more than it could allow any other moral flaw common to our self-centered, rebellious race. It is we who are chronically unfaithful to our Lord and our fellow creatures, which we then project onto Him. Attributing disloyalty to our Maker and Redeemer is, at its heart, self-deceptive \u2026 a \u201clie of the soul.\u201d Our Creator is actually the only Being in the universe truly worthy of the title \u201cFaithful One.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Personally, I know that I have been guilty of this sin of projection \u2026 Why else would I not joyfully and trustfully submit myself fully to the perfectly faithful Lover of my soul? What might be called the \u201cUnfaithfulness Projection\u201d is one of the primary reasons I have trouble surrendering my life completely to God.<\/p>\n<p>God\u2019s perfection should not incite fear in His children but inspire confidence and a deep and abiding peace (one that seems to elude many professing Christians in this day and age.) Our sometimes pervasive lack of serenity stems mainly from our not understanding that every characteristic of God, including his faithfulness, embodies such flawlessness.<\/p>\n<p>In a certain sense, divine faithfulness extends even to the ungodly. Every day, God steadfastly sustains the physical world, desiring that the physical life of human beings may come to embody spiritual life as well. For this reason, God continues to offer salvation to the human race until, in the fullness of time (to be perfectly determined by Him), He brings the existence of this planet as we know it today to an end. In the meantime the Lord is, as His word declares, faithful to all generations whom He has ordained to dwell upon the earth.<\/p>\n<p>No, our God is never unfaithful; it is literally not \u201cin Him\u201d to be so. Unfaithfulness, like every other aspect of sinful and fallen humanity, is contrary to the innate, immovable, and immutable nature of divinity. Furthermore it is partially in this knowledge of the Lord\u2019s true nature that human beings can obtain any real hope for the future, be it in either the temporal or eternal sense.<\/p>\n<p>May God help us to learn about His character in such a way as to forever banish any projection of our imperfection onto Him and to trust in His inherent, unwavering, and eternal faithfulness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Copyright 2014 by Shea Oakley All rights reserved God cannot be unfaithful. A perfect, holy and loving God, by definition, is not capable of unfaithfulness any more than He is capable of lying. His character cannot allow unfaithfulness any more than it could allow any other moral flaw common to our self-centered, rebellious race. It&hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"toivo-read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2014\/07\/22\/the-unfaithfulness-projection\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read more <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Unfaithfulness Projection<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-christian","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6GkOA-8K","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":819,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2016\/04\/12\/betrayals-end\/","url_meta":{"origin":542,"position":0},"title":"Betrayal\u2019s End","date":"April 12, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright by Shea Oakley All rights reserved. Trust comes hard. We do not naturally trust God. To put our lives in His hands is a decision we must make, and it often is not the easiest of decisions. The result of the Fall is a dangerous world inhabited by sometimes\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":410,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2013\/09\/18\/promises-promises\/","url_meta":{"origin":542,"position":1},"title":"Promises, Promises","date":"September 18, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Promises, Promises Copyright by Shea Oakley All rights reserved God does not ever break His promises, but He does allow circumstances in the lives of His children that tempt us to think he does. We mistake experiences of loss and unfulfilled desire for evidence God is not trustworthy. However the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Christian&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1204,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2018\/01\/12\/no-fixed-frontier\/","url_meta":{"origin":542,"position":2},"title":"No &#8220;Fixed Frontier&#8221;","date":"January 12, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2017 by Shea Oakley All rights reserved \u201cThere is, we have to admit, a line of demarcation between God\u2019s part in us and the enemy\u2019s region. But it is, we hope, a fighting line, not a frontier fixed by agreement.\u201d \u2013 C.S. Lewis Most, if not all, truly honest\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":507,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2014\/05\/07\/god-and-the-gordian-knot\/","url_meta":{"origin":542,"position":3},"title":"God and the Gordian Knot","date":"May 7, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2014 by Shea Oakley All rights reserved There are times in our lives when we must realize that we have done everything we can to resolve a problem and now there are only two remaining things to do. The first is to give the entire circumstance to God. The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Christian&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":406,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2013\/09\/04\/bitterness-kills\/","url_meta":{"origin":542,"position":4},"title":"Bitterness Kills","date":"September 4, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Bitterness Kills Copyright by Shea Oakley All rights reserved There is a certain cold logic to bitterness. Bitterness appeals most strongly to our sense of right and wrong, to our sense of fairness. Bitterness says that we have a permanent right to hate those who have hurt us or allowed\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Christian&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":122,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2012\/06\/02\/escaping-illusions-about-sin\/","url_meta":{"origin":542,"position":5},"title":"Escaping Illusions about Sin","date":"June 2, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Escaping Illusions about Sin Copyright by Shea Oakley All rights reserved Sin is deception. It is amazing how attractive it can appear, even to believers, when we are in the throes of temptation. The dark seems like light and we are lulled into the notion that evil is somehow good.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Christian&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}