I seized the opportunity the other day of buying the latest edition of Lawrence Pervin and Oliver John's psychology text book that is more or less standard in American Universities, namely Personality: Theory and Research, to try and catch up on where the behavioural psychologists are going in their latest ideas. Out here in rural Sweden it is not easy to find academic books in English so this was a boon. The first thing I couldn't help but notice was that those psychologists which are no longer 'mainstream' - the greats like Jung and Janov - did not get so much as a mention. This is a time where Freud, Rogers, Kelly et al rule the roost because they represent the current 'orthodoxy'. The landscape is unmistabably secular-humanist and behaviourist with no room for other viewpoints.

What most people don't know is that this philosophical bent shapes science, politics and state education to such a degree these days that even Christians and Messianics now, to varying degrees, think in this mindset. It is principally this conditioning which causes such problems in accepting and implementing Yahweh's revealed Torah lifestyle and it is precisely the disjunction between society's psychological conditioning and Yahweh's Way that has prompted me to write a number of essays and sermons to explain the Psychology of the Divine such as the Slumbering Spirit, Awakened Spirit, I Choose to Live and other series.

As believers it is important that we have some kind of knowledge of the psyche and human psychology so as not to be deceived by the psychiatrists into being conditioned into believing and attempting to live in their artificial reality. They're not even agreed which is why there are over 250 different systems of psychotherapy around. This kind of thinking is not, moreover, learned only at schools and colleges (as a result of the conditioning of bureaucrats who write curricula or the politicians who make them into law), it is also, and equally effectively, conditioned into us every time we see a movie, because in Movieland we see the world - or an aspect of it - through the conditioned mind of the producer. We are literally living in a pre-programmed Matrix in which we have been conditioned to accept the prevailing philosophies and views of the world at the time. Little wonder there is such confusion.

Coming to Yah'shua (Jesus) not only brings about, through supernatural means, a complete re-orientation about life as we make contact with the Ultimate Reality that is Yahweh but also requires a continuing re-education. And there is so much we have to unlearn! This unlearning does not, moreover, occur effortlessly. It requires submersion in Scripture so that we can let Yahweh condition us to think in His way. Laziness, indifference, prejudice and demonic obstruction all hamper this process which is why only those who are focussed on divine Emet (Truth) and Tavnith (Pattern) stand a chance of getting out of this Matrix. And Yahweh's world is radically different from the one made by man and inspired by demons. They're about as disjunctive as disjunction can be.

I find some of the biggest differences between the world and Yahweh's Kingdom come in the form of gender rôles and the marriage dynamic. Feminism is a major impediment to it and therefore to the eternal durability of the marriage bond. One of the several revelations given to this ministry concerns these things and in particular the nature of Holy Echad (Oneness) Marriage (HEM).

What I want to do today is tie in the Seven Essentials that we have been discussiong over the last two days into marriage itself because the Body of Messiah (Christ) is modelled on the marriage relationship, each reflecting back on the other in terms of heavenly tavnith (pattern), the husband-wife relationship being a direct parallel with the relationship between Messiah and the Messianic Community (Church). So close and intimate is this reflection that wives are to view and treat their husbands in the same way that believers generally view and treat Messiah (Eph.5:22). This poses huge challenges for mortal men and women alike. However, the tavnith (patterm) is unmistakable and undeniable unless you chose to wear all the blinkers of the secularists and so distort scriptural reality.

So let us conclude today by having a brief look at these Seven Essentials by translating them onto the human marriage level.