Haran Is Not Far Enough: Cities and Industry as the Manifestation of Evil (Ignorance and Doubt of Our Oneness With God) and Making Our Minds Ready For God

You might have perceived this underlying theme that runs through the Bible thicker than the scarlet thread: that cities are bad. Cain was a settler, a farmer. Able was a shepherd. Cain built cities, his offspring began the first industries. Nimrod built cities, a kingdom for his father Cush -- ignorance to rule from. God had to scatter people out of cities, even Jerusalem. God called Abram to leave Ur of the Chaldees. Abram got to Haran and settled down. These were institutional religions. "Niet! Keep going! Haran isn't far enough from city life. Go out to a land I will show you . . . as a nomad. Just you and Me, mano a mano."

What is going on? We think of the biblical lands like countries we have now, with checkpoints at the borders: "Welcome to . . . " They were in those days cities: city "states." Ramses, Babylon, Nineveh, etc., were big cities that became the seats of social power -- corrupt in all its forms. But this is all symbolic, representative of a spiritual truth: our minds are the land of God, the holy "ground" Moses stood upon. God is the only city we are to seek, the City of God being Himself, our imagination.

Cities are generally manifestations of ignorance, confusion, and doubt, aberrations of normal human relationships. Like apes in zoos, in cities people become perverse. Remember Sodom? It is desirable to leave the city and return to the soil. Which brings me to an odd thought about the imagination: Moses uses the term 'beautiful' in Genesis 1 to describe how God then saw the world. It was beautiful. So was Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Bathsheba (and any number of other women in the Bible), and Canaan, the Promised Land. Does beautiful in this case mean that the "land" of the imagination is ready for the creative force -- as in Eil Shaddai and Jehovah Jireh -- that by it the power of God will provide for every need?

Make your mind beautiful to God.