Isaiah 11:2-3 “And the spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the spirit of counsel and of might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord; and he will delight in the fear of the Lord”
The idea of the Spirit of the Lord is a highly underappreciated concept in Christianity. It is washed out, and it is mostly agreed upon that the Spirit of the Lord that worked and lived inside the apostles of the Bible is a substantially less powerful Spirit than the one available to Christians today.
This would be comparable to if, instead of striving everyday towards finding Enlightenment, Buddhists decided to idolize the Buddha; instead of denying their egos and finding peace in God and Love, fortifying themselves with words they can hear and things they can see.
The Spirit is Enlightenment and is the path every human’s feet longs to follow.
The interesting thing about the verse above is the traits of this Spirit: wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge and fear of the Lord. With the exceptions of might and fear of the lord, they are almost all the same thing.
— Before reading any further, try for yourself to figure out the difference between knowledge, wisdom, understanding and counsel. —
They are all undoubtedly different traits, but to describe one with out using the other is quite difficult. For example, wisdom seems to be a combination of knowledge and understanding and counsel seems to be something for which knowledge and understanding is necessary.
There is a theme throughout all of them, each trait is a function of something that there is no word for. The closest thing I could put my finger on was empathy, primarily empathy between humans, but also an empathy with everything.
The verse could be interpreted as the Spirit showing itself through us as an ethereal connection to everything.
With this understanding in mind, might and fear of God fit back in nicely.
Might is lack of fear, and lack of fear can only be truly obtained through an intimate connection, through true knowledge and understanding. The Spirit of the Lord saves people from their lonely and precarious position on the outside and helps them to realize that they are part of the whole.
The fear of the Lord, which is the earth shattering feeling you get when you know God is real, is even more a function of this empathy. The only way to not believe in God is to be disconnected with reality, once the Spirit enlightens the connections all around us, there God is staring us in the face.
The Spirit is the water that turns a bunch of islands into a planet. It opens eyes to a reality so different it literally feels as if you were born again into a whole different world!
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