Kill the Meddling

Lately I’ve had a lot of meaningless dreams. I used to have dreams that came from God, but for a few months, I’ve been waking up after dreams that didn’t seem to mean anything. I have asked God if there was any point in exploring the dreams, and the answer was negative.

Today I had a dream that obviously came from God.

I was a steward on an airplane. It was a small commuter jet. I was standing at the front, doing whatever stewards do as people board. A coarse little man who was losing his hair boarded, and he reached down and put a package in my sock, without permission.

Picture Ben Gazzara, with greying hair, about five feet four inches tall. He was stocky. He wore shorts and a tacky golf shirt with horizontal stripes. He looked like a retiree fresh from the grandstand at Hialeah. He should have had a Racing Form in his hand.

The package was rectangular. It was a few small items wrapped carelessly in plastic wrap. Judging by the outline, one of the items was an ampule of morphine. If you’ve ever seen the movie The Deep, you know what a morphine ampule is. It’s a tiny glass bottle, welded shut at the top.

I reached into my sock immediately and took the package out, and I told the pilot what was happening.

The pilot was a young man with blond hair. He would have been around 25. He had hair with tight waves, and it looked like it hadn’t been long since he got out of the shower and combed it. His hair was damp with something that was probably oil. He was thin. He was around six feet tall. I would describe him as a pretty boy. Not someone you would be afraid to fight.

The pilot was not all that helpful. He was earnest and so on. He wanted to do a good job. But he was indecisive and weak.

I saw that the short man, who had no business on the plane, was talking to the passengers. He was standing at the front of them, addressing them as though he had authority. He was telling them counterproductive things. He was lying.

I grabbed him and shoved him down in a seat. I shut him up. The pilot was too weak, so I did it.

The dream was about me, but it could be applied to anyone.

The pilot is my mind. He is supposed to make good decisions and guide me. He is supposed to be strong and decisive.

I was my spirit. I was better qualified to run things than the pilot, but I was in a service role.

The sock was clothing, and clothing means excuses and works. We hide behind it so we can continue sinning.

The package represented iniquities. It represented the evil habits Satan uses to apply drag to me and impede my progress. It was clear because Satan’s efforts are not original or clever. They are not unpredictable. They work even though we can see them coming.

Feet represent flesh. The package was placed in my sock because it represented habits Satan works to cultivate in my flesh.

The airplane and the people in it represent my purpose. Like any Christian, I am supposed to help a certain number of people to be elevated and to journey toward God. It was a small plane because not many will listen.

The short man was a demon, sent to corrupt me and deceive the people God sent me to talk to.

It’s not flattering to have God use a waffling cream puff to represent your mind in a dream! I would have preferred Daniel Craig’s James Bond.

The dream confirms what I already know. Demons try to rule us through habit, and this is true of Christians who think demons are rare or that they couldn’t possibly have demons. Demons are small, weak, tired, and old, and if we fight them correctly, their knees give way and they collapse.

The demon was like a weary old salesman with no light left inside him. Willy Loman in a golf shirt from Marshall’s.

It has to be discouraging, selling the same moldy products to one generation of human beings after another, with no hope of salvation and no reward except the ashy-tasting pleasure of knowing you are helping other beings to share your terrible fate.

God invites people to the marriage supper of the lamb. Demons invite people to burn and scream along with them in the universe’s garbage incinerator.

The dream underscores this: if we are overly burdened with iniquity, the people we are sent to help will see it, and they will judge God not by his perfection but by our corruption. A Christian can corrupt people through preaching.

It’s important to get rid of demons. Bottom line. They make us miserable. They drive us to commit sins and increase our guilt. They give us diseases. They kill us. They need to go. And churches are doing virtually nothing to fight them, even though God gave us the tools to do it. The biggest church teaches us to pray to them.

I should be more committed and decisive in driving demons out of my life, and so should everyone else.

There is no one to teach us, so we flounder. Preachers are weak and full of lies.

We’re supposed to be heirs, not pioneers. We should be inheriting knowledge and power from earlier generations, but they threw it all away, so there is nothing good to inherit. We are not like Jews, who pass knowledge, skill, and wealth down to their children. We are like ghetto dwellers who start from scratch at birth, repeating fatal mistakes heirs would never make.

Every generation should be better off than the last.

Think of a garden. If you buy plants and water them consistently, they will grow larger and become self-supporting. Then you can go to them and take what you need whenever you want. If you don’t water them, they only supply you until they die. They never grow. When you want something from them, you have to start the process over again with new plants. This is what secular sages call a “cycle.” They think self-esteem and handouts can break it, but only God has the answer.

If you don’t inherit good, you inherit evil. There is no neutrality. God gave me this word: “I am a living thing.” He meant I am always changing. I can’t rest and expect to remain prosperous and well. I get better, or I rot.