Doing and Being

William Landon provides the following wonderful insights into the difference between doing and being in his book The Spiritual You:

"A key distinction that we must always keep in mind when dealing with the spiritual aspect of life is the concept of internal versus external. These two ideas are critical to keeping our thinking clear as we move through life in this world. We are daily bombarded with ideas and perceptions from the outside world. These may be from other people or from the circumstances and situations that we experience. In a more subtle way, these ideas may also come from our own flesh. Please keep in mind that this is still, from a spiritual point of view, 'outside' us. From the spiritual perspective of life, the real, true 'us' is made up of our soul and spirit. The physical body with all of its components is a temporary fixture that allows us to interact with a physical creation. We are also exposed to the leading from our human spirit through the conscience or our intuition. This prompting, unlike the leading of the flesh, is truly internal.

"The things that come from outside of our core being (soul and spirit) are external and therefore secondary in importance to the things that come from our internal being (our spirit or inmost being). It would be simple-minded and wrong for us to flatly reject or disregard the things that come into our lives from the external world. Every part of our life experience has some impact on our being. We are influenced by every event we experience and every idea we are exposed to. These external influences (ideas and experiences) must be weighed and considered but they also must be kept in their proper place. In the end, we are inevitably influenced by the events and ideas we are exposed to. However, the manner and depth of this influence is a direct result of how we choose to be affected or influenced by the external. One of the most common errors made by people trying to find their way in walking in the spiritual is to allow themselves to be driven (controlled) by the external. We cannot hope to live spiritual lives if we are motivated or have our values formed by these external influences. We do not have much control over what comes into our lives from the outside world. We do, however, have a great measure of control how we choose to respond to these external influences.

"I have previously mentioned some of the most common and pervasive of these external influences: the flesh, religion, false spirituality, works and law. Other examples of external influences on our lives are the people we have contact or relationship with and the situations and circumstances we encounter. In all of these meetings and events we must never lose sight of the fact that who we are and what drives us is always properly internal. To allow ourselves to be driven or controlled by external influences is to set ourselves up to be controlled by the flesh.

"The force that propels us and prompts our actions must ultimately come from within and not from without. If we are to live as the Father would have us live we must be controlled by the Father's life in our human spirit. If we are to have any hope of moving through life with the peace and rest that is the Father's intention for us, we must have our actions as well as our identity powered from within. The proper order of empowerment can only be by the life of the Father through Christ in our spirit. From our spirit, through our surrender to the working of that life, we have the proper governance of our soul. Our soul then causes the actions manifested out of the body and the physical expression of the life that is in us. This is the only proper chain of command we can have. When we choose to allow this flow of control in our lives we automatically exclude any other influence. Conversely, when we give in to any other order of life leading we put ourselves in a condition of imbalance.

Imbalance

"If we live by any other order of action we are out of balance. If the soul tries to influence the body apart from the life of God in our spirit we will fail. We must fail because the soul lacks both the ability for moral guidance and the full understanding of our situation. Our knowledge is always limited--we simply do not know everything about any situation. This does not mean that we are stupid. We are just not omnipotent. In fact, the soul is incapable of exerting guidance because it lacks the resources to perform this function. When we think that we are operating out of our soul (living by our wits) we are deceived. What is really happening when our leading appears to be coming from our soul is that some external force is enticing the soul to seek its own agenda. This 'something else' is ultimately the flesh. When we seek to carry out our own self-centered agenda it is really someone else's agenda that is being carried out.

"Most people, both the born again and the unsaved, fall prey to this error. From time to time this imbalanced type of living victimizes every person. If we are not focused on our spiritual nature we are living in our soul. When we live in the soul we are subject to the moral leading of Satan from our flesh. What our soul lacks (the ability to function as our moral referee) the flesh will make up. The flesh MUST make this up if we do not allow the spirit to serve in this capacity: 'Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey--whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?' (Romans 6:16). Like it or not, it is our lot in life to be slaved to one moral governor or another. Never forget that we are in no way equipped to be fully independent moral agents. This makes the option of being our own moral leader unattainable. This is very much like the alcoholic who feels that they can control their drinking.

"The problem for the unsaved person is that they cannot allow their human spirit to make up this leadership deficit because their spirit is not fully functional. The born again, though their spirit is functional, may elect through their will to ignore the leading of the Father from their spirit. If we reject the Father's leading then we automatically accept Satan's. No matter what the external source of leading appears to be, it is really operating through only one agency. This agency is the flesh.

"The born again person who is trapped by their choice into an external view of life will default to the flesh's leading because they are not surrendered to the leading of the Father from their spirit. We can only look one way at a time. This means we must be either focused on the spirit or on the flesh. We cannot be focused on both simultaneously and there is no third option. We can, however, oscillate back and forth between these two centers.

"This is not an issue of salvation but one of living. When we accept the gift of new life through Christ we are born again and that transition is final. We cannot lose our salvation because we cannot be 'unborn.' These are, however, limitations on what has occurred in us at the point of salvation. All we have done in accepting the Fatherhood of God is to begin living with a real option for moral governance. The unsaved have no choice about their moral governor and must live by the prompting of the flesh tempered by the knowledge of good and evil and the tugging of their conscience. The unsaved have the same fundamental choice that we all have--to accept or reject God's offer to be our spiritual Father. Once we make the choice to accept God's offer our real life choosing can begin.

"In either case (saved or unsaved) if we live in any manner outside the intention of the Father for our life we will be in conflict. This is why there is no rest for those who are outside of the Father's household: 'And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed?' (Hebrews 3:18). Even sadder than the fate of the unsaved is the lack of rest for the saved who do not choose to enter the Father's rest. This is a sadder state because these people have the rest available to them through God's life in their own spirit. Sadly, these people are cut off from God's rest not by necessity but by choice. The Christian who refuses to accept God's leading in his or her life is someone who refuses to take advantage of the Father's rest. The plight of the unsaved is sad because they do not have an option. However, the saved people that insist on living in their souls (by the illusion of living by their own resource) are in an even sadder state. Their condition is more tragic because they are so close to having peace and rest but choose not to avail themselves of it.

A Learned Response

"What many people misunderstand about being born again is what exactly happens to us when we experience rebirth. A common misconception about spiritual rebirth is that we are made completely and entirely perfect by being born again. Some people will point to a verse in Scripture to support this idea: 'Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!' (2 Corinthians 5:17). The state of any Christian's life is a sad testimony that this complete perfection cannot be so. If we correctly understand our makeup we can correctly understand this verse. This is another instance of the importance of understanding that our true life is a spiritual life. The Greek word for 'new' here is kainos [kahee-nos'] and refers to the quality of newness: '1) new, 1a) as respects form, 1a1) recently made, fresh, recent, unused, unworn, 1b) as respects substance, 1b1) of a new kind, unprecedented, novel, uncommon, unheard of.' To expand on this idea we see that newness in this instance refers to a qualitative change: '2357--denotes the new primarily in reference to quality, the fresh, unworn.' The reason rebirth is such a foundational change is that by this act we are made qualitatively different at the deepest level of our being (spiritually). When we are reborn we are made new and perfect in our spirit. This is the deepest change of being any of us can experience. This does not mean we are perfect (or even different) in our body or soul immediately after salvation. Many born again people are ruined by the guilt that comes from religious people and organizations trying to make this error a reality. To support the contention of complete perfection coming at the time of salvation we may be told that if we make mistakes or sin that we are probably not really born again. This is rubbish.

"The reality of rebirth is that it is a beginning and not an ending. When we are reborn we start out on a journey of growth and discovery. Learning to walk in the newness of life is a renewal of our mind: 'Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will' (Romans 12:2). To put it simply, after salvation we may elect to continue to live by our own resource or we can choose to have God teach us how to live His way. Learning to walk in the Spirit is just that--a learning experience. When a child learns to walk there are many tumbles and scraped knees. As we learn to walk in the spirit we will also have our share of mistakes and the consequences of these errors. This is quite normal and natural. As we learn to more and more trust the leading of the Father's life from our spirit, we become more used to letting this be our life leading. This is a learned response and not something we just 'fall into.' Like any other learned action, the more we submit to the leading of the Spirit, the easier and more natural this way of living becomes. This dynamic is entirely in keeping with the life nature of our spirituality. Life is about growth and growth always involves learning.

Ruled by the Flesh

"Both the unsaved and the unsurrendered born again are not purely living by their soul's direction. They are deceived into believing that they are, but this is only a deception. Remember always, the soul does not have the capacity to rule itself. There is no credible evidence you can find supporting the idea that our soul contains the capacity for moral governance. We may know right and wrong in our intellect but this is not a moral governor because it does not, in itself, give us the ability to live correctly. This is what a moral governor really is. Moral leadership is the force that empowers us to live in accordance with a given moral code. This can either be a good moral code or a bad one. When people reject the Father's offer of salvation or refuse to surrender to the Father's Lordship, they suffer from the ultimate imbalance.

"The greatest imbalance that a person can experience is to be ruled by the flesh. In this condition we suffer from the moral equivalent of letting the animals run the zoo. By this I mean that living under the moral guidance of the flesh is living with the part of us that should be the servant operating as the ruler. The body was always meant by the Father to be the servant of the soul and spirit. The body was designated by the Father to interact with the physical world and carry out the commands of the Spirit directed soul-will.

"When we reject the leading of the Father from our spirit we abandon the soul to being dominated by Satan's immoral leadership from the flesh. Seeing this, is it any wonder that unsaved and unsurrendered people do all manner of vile things? It is not a coincidence that both the unsaved and the unsurrendered born again often act in similar ways. This is often misunderstood by the world in general to be an indication that Christianity doesn't really work. What this really shows is that people act in similar ways when the same moral governor (the flesh) is directing their actions. When people find themselves in this condition, they are being governed by the part of their being that was intended to be the servant. The Bible tells us that this is a truly unhealthy situation: 'It is not fitting for a fool to live in luxury how much worse for a slave to rule over princes!' (Proverbs 19:10). Also see Proverbs 30:21-22 and Ecclesiastes 10:1-7. This is why a person living under any order other than the order ordained by God cannot succeed. This proper order or rule is the Father's governing Spirit (in our spirit) ruling the soul which in turn directs and controls the body.

External Focus

"We cannot enter the rest the Father has for us if we are looking the wrong way. Even after we are saved we must choose. Every day and every minute of every day we must choose where our leading will come from. This is part of the spontaneous nature of life. Further, we must accept that with the choice of a leading we must submit to the sovereignty of that leading. This is not a choice of where we get our resource so much as it is a choice between surrender and rebellion. Practically speaking, our choice of spiritual leadership is a choice between truth and falsehood. People will submit to the corrupt leading of the flesh because they don't really know or believe that they are being led this way. The original great deception of Satan for humanity lies in this reality. The devil convinced us that we could run our own life. This is the lie that traps most of the world into being used and abused by the evil one.

"Many born again Christians fail to achieve the full potential that the Father wishes for them because of this error. When we are born again, religion often tells us that we now have the full abundance of God's resource at our disposal. This is partly true, but only partly. We must always remember that God is not on our side. This is not because the Father doesn't love us or that He doesn't want us to succeed but, rather, because He does. God is not on our side because we don't have 'a side': 'Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, "Are you for us or for our enemies?" "Neither," he replied, "but as commander of the army of the LORD I have now come"' (Joshua 5:13-14a). This is another instance of the truth that we were never equipped or intended to live as fully independent creatures.

"A word of caution is in order here. If we take this message or truth and filter it through an external focus we will come to ruin. It is the attempt to mix the salvation and life we receive from God with our desire for lordship over our own life that produces traps and dead ends such as prosperity theology. The external focus causes us to see the blessing of the Father (His giving us His life) as a resource to be used to further our own ambitions and desires. What this amounts to is an attempt to subjugate God to our will. This can never be.

Doing and Being

"Perhaps the greatest distinction in the issue of internal and external living is the difference between doing and being. What we do is visible in the external world and these actions are directed toward the external world. Doing is external. Being is what we ARE and is a product of what is inside us (our nature): 'Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit' (Matthew 12:33). Our being, in its unexpressed attribute, is invisible. Our being or nature is only observable by the expressed thoughts, words and deeds that come out of our life. Even at this, these parts of our living are not always a true or accurate indicator of our nature. Someone's true nature may be masked because of a lack of surrender to their true life or because of misinterpretation of their actions by those around them. We may misunderstand another person's actions or those actions may be purposely misleading.

"In the long run, our true nature must come forth. The problem with human beings is that we have our doing tainted by the knowledge of good and evil. We are able to engage in the deception of both others and ourselves. We know what is right but we are not bound by any imperative to act in accordance with that knowledge. From a cynical point of view we could say that all the knowledge of good and evil does for both the unsaved and the unsurrendered is to guide us in knowing when we need to be devious. We know the things we do that must be done in secret to keep from looking bad and we know what things we can do openly (or even overtly) to look good. It is this sad state of affairs that characterizes the lives of all of us when we are either unsaved or unsurrendered.

"This lack of a proper motivation (the life of God creating an other-centered nature in us) is what Christ speaks of when He says that no one is capable of good (Luke 18:19). This is a very hard truth for us to accept because we have always cherished the myth that we are in our basic nature, 'good.' Our own flesh tries to convince us that we are good or at least that we are capable of becoming good on our own. Religion and humanism have tried to sell us on strategies that they claim will make us good out of our own exertions. All of this, however, is in vain.

"If we are truly fortunate we will have the Father bring us to the place where we can see that our true condition is utterly helpless and hopeless: 'So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work in my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?' (Romans 7:21-24). The truth of our existence is this: We cannot do anything on our own to be the people we were meant to be. Further, we cannot do any truly good thing out of our own resource. The only way that we can ever do purely good deeds is to be what the Father intends that we be. To put it another way, it is only out of proper being that proper doing can ever hope to come.

Proper Being

"Proper being comes from only one source. This source is the Father. Proper being can only involve being the person that God created each of us to be. There is no higher attainment that any person can hope to reach. Whether we are day laborers or the heads of great corporations is really immaterial. Whether we are rich or poor, esteemed or despised is of little eternal consequence. As Jesus taught, it is what happens to our inside person that counts: 'What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?' (Mark 8:36). In the end, the condition of our outside will at best counts greatly against us if we have sacrificed spiritual life, health and growth for material or worldly position and advantage.

"The only way we can be the people the Father wants us to be is by accepting His life through Christ to be our only life. This decision is the means to new life. Beyond this is the issue of growing in this new life. We need this growth if we are to experience the real benefits of being part of the Father's household. We must accept Christ to have God's life and we must surrender our living to the operation of the Father's life in us to enjoy the experience of that life. These are the only two necessary aspects of proper being. Living by the Father's life is even beyond our having any understanding of this dynamic. I think it is a wonderful gift if the Father shows us this reality but we can live the reality without our having ever been consciously aware of what is going on. This is the elegant simplicity of the Father's plan for us.

"We can never legitimately say, for example, 'God's intention for me was to be a pastor.' The same is true for being a lawyer, a banker, rich, poor or any other position or condition. All that the Father ever wants any of us to be is His well-loved children. We may be called to many pursuits or roles or conditions in life, but this is not our being. What we have and what we do are aspects of our living and the choices we have made and are making. These things are outcomes and not sources or origins.

"After all, I can choose to follow any number of career paths. Whether I succeed in any of these choices or not is dependent on my life. That is to say, dependent on my having God's life in me to be my life and on my being surrendered to the working of that life in me and out of me. This success is measured not be worldly attainments, positions and possessions but on my touching other lives positively and in my living in peace and rest. These things have no necessary dependence on my physical circumstances.

"If I touch another life to some positive effect this is not fundamentally a result of the action involved. The positive touch was a result of my surrendered obedience to the operation of the Father's life in me. If I have peace and rest (that is to say that I have had my life positively touched) it is for the same reason and from the same source. No person on this earth has the ability in and of him or herself to do what is good and right. My peace and rest come from my surrender to the Father's life operating as my life.

Proper Doing

"One of the most difficult things we have to recognize is proper doing. This recognition is difficult for two reasons. The first reason is that religion and society have constantly misled us into believing that what we do is who we are. If this is so, then we should take every action we see at face value. I doubt that anyone is naive enough to accept this idea. The second reason is that our doing is the only visible part of our earthly existence. What we know about other people is almost entirely the product of what we see them do or hear them say. We start out in life by living at the body and soul level of understanding. This makes the spiritual (invisible) part of life a complete mystery to us. It is this invisible quality of the spiritual that makes it a part of living that is not popular to wordly people and organizations. Our spiritual existence is not easily assessable by quick observation. This is the mysterious aspect of the spiritual part of everyone. This mystery is only revealed to our understanding as we surrender to the Father's teaching about this invisible realm.

"We must come to see the proper relationship between doing and being. It is only in letting the Father show us the reality of this relationship that we can be free. If we do not accept the Father's teaching on doing and being we will forever try to be something out of our doing. In this we will forever be trying to do the impossible. Further, if what I do is who I am it becomes difficult if not impossible to admit to my mistakes. If my doing produces my being then my making a mistake means that I am in some way defective.

"The true reality of life is this--proper doing only comes out of proper being. This is the other teaching that comes out of Jesus' analogy of the fruit of the tree: 'Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers' (Luke 6:44). We readily understand the physical or visible part of this teaching--that good people do good things. What we don't see so readily is that these good things come from a good nature. This is the 'good' that comes out of the invisible quality of the Father's 'good.'

"As I have spoken of earlier, 'good' as God accounts it, is the right thing done out of the right motive. Further, there is only one right motive in the entire universe. This one over-arching right motive is obedience to the leading of the life of the Father within us. We know this because there is no one who is good except God: '"Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered, "No one is good except God alone"' (Mark 10:18). So it only makes sense that the only good deeds there are must come from the Father. The only truly good deeds done anywhere by people are the things that are done by the Father through the willing cooperation of His surrendered children. This is what Jesus testifies about in His own earthly life: 'So Jesus said, "When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am the one I claim to be and that I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me"' (John 8:28). A deed is not 'good' solely because it is pleasant or even because it produces positive effect in someone's life. In order for true good to occur there must be some connection between the action and God.

Should

"The misconceptions about doing and being are never so clearly shown as they are in the 'shoulds' of the world. Both humanity's religions and human societies have long lists of 'shoulds.' We should be nice and we should do good things. We should keep from doing bad things and we should play nice together. Wrapped up in this thinking is the same old idea that what we do determines who we are. If this is true then it naturally follows that nice people do nice things and rotten people do rotten things. This might be true except for two tiny details.

"The first thing that makes doing ineffective as a measure of right living is the knowledge of good and evil. As I spoke of earlier, because we know right and wrong we know what we are supposed to do. The disastrous failure of this human attribute as it pertains to producing right living is the fact that it is powerless. No one ever did right because they knew it was right. The only thing that the knowledge of good and evil empowers us to do (out of our own resource) is to know what we can do openly and what we must do secretly. Right actions done apart from the Father's life are only right looking actions because they are done for wrong motive. That wrong motive is always about self: 'When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures' (James 4:3). When we do 'good' things apart from the leading of the Father we do them to look good (for our own reputation), to manipulate other people (to put them in our debt) or to feel good about ourselves (for self-gratification). When seen in this light, our 'good' deeds hardly look so good any more: 'All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away' (Isaiah 64:6).

"It is because the agents of society and the agents of the religious organizations of men have no understanding of true life that they give people such poor direction on how they should act. Out of our desire to act in independence from the Father we seek to become good (or look good) through what we do. In reality, we do enormous evil by attempting to act apart from the life of the Father in us. When we choose to go our own way we give ourselves over to the guidance and direction of the evil one. In this we not only don't do the Father's work we wind up in reality opposing it: 'It is not to "honor his father" with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition' (Matthew 15:6).

"The second problem with approaching life from a position of 'what we should be doing' is the relationship between actions and origins. As I have mentioned before, actions always come out of the nature that is operating in us. No one ever changed their identity by what they did. The things that we should be doing are those things that are consistent with our true life and nature. When we do things because we 'should be' doing them the real motivation is often guilt. If our motivation is guilt this is a sure indication that we are not operating in agreement with God: 'Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus' (Romans 8:1). Guilt is a legal issue and the Father's design for us is a life issue.

"The final truth on this issue of 'what we should be doing' is that there is only one legitimate 'should' in our lives. This is that we should be about the Father's work. The only thing I can honestly tell anyone that they should be doing is that they should be surrendered to the leading and working of the Father's life in them as their only life.

The Invisible Life

"The spiritual life is an invisible life. No one can see the 'spiritual you' with the eyes of the flesh: 'For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God' (Colossians 3:3). For the born again, what our true makeup consists of is not known now and will only be revealed later: 'Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known' (1 Corinthians 13:12). Our true nature and identity is not fully known by ourselves. How can we ever hope to be properly known by the people around us in this world?

"We should not let the fact that we are not truly known (or knowable) trouble us. In the spiritual realm, it is far more important to be known by God than it is even to know God: 'But the man who loves God is known by God' (1 Corinthians 8:3). Our entire success, treasure and hope is based on one thing only--that God knows us. This means that we are the children of God and the members of His family. Even religious doing and supernatural doing are no substitute for being recognized by God: 'Many will say to me on that day, "Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?" Then I will tell them plainly, "I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!"' (Matthew 7:22-23). This is all that ever matters--to love God and to be known by Him. This being true, it is quite insignificant to do great things or even to be known by people (to have a reputation).

"It is almost certain that if the Father calls you to walk with Him you will be misunderstood. Or more precisely, your actions will be misunderstood and you will be criticized. The criticism of the world we can generally accept, we expect rejection from this quarter. The criticism of brothers and sisters living in religion is harder to take. We are constrained by the love of the Father to love all people and especially to love our siblings in the family of God. It is painful therefore to have our brothers and sisters reject us because they cannot come away from their external view of life and its orientation to doing. In the end, though, to bear this criticism and separation is all part of the living answer we give to the Father when He asks us: 'Do you truly love Me more than these?'"