Foundations of Creation Part III

We are on this earth to be enticed by two opposing forces: God and Satan.  It stands to reason that if God has a vision for us, then Satan does to.  A way that I like to think about Satan's plan for us is as the Funnel.  Satan tries to take us down a path where our options get narrower and narrower, our vision gets clouded and blind, and we end up in the perpetual crisis of Me and Now.

God's plan for us is exactly the opposite.  He invites us to focus our lives on His service, and by doing so we build on a broad foundation of good works until we end up creating a Spire.  To stand on the Spire, we must school our actions and desires to be perfectly in line with His will, but from the top of the Spire we can see and feel Creation and Eternity.

I would contend that every single action you take today will either drop you further into the Funnel or lay a piece of the Spire.  Our lives are full of Spires and Funnels.  Our kids, or finances, our religion, our friends, our health, etc.  Every Spire and Funnel are paired.  You cannot build a true Spire unless you have laid a foundation underneath it, and you cannot lay a foundation over a Funnel.  Pay attention to your life tomorrow and think about whether or not a relationship, a habit, a pattern of thinking, or even a food is shrinking your perspective or expanding it; inviting God's love or chasing pleasure.

The DSM-IV is the disagnostic manual that psychiatrists use to analyze disorders in their patients to determine if they have a recognized clinical issue.  One of the key criteria used across almost every disorder is the idea that "the disorder causes significant detrimental impact on the person's life".  If we borrow this concept, we can understand that an addiction is any Funnel that has gotten big enough that we can't control it any more, can't hide it, and can't run from it because it's running our lives.  All we do when we admit we have an addiction is point at the Funnel and say: "This is real and I'm finally going to do something about it."