You are familiar with the process of projection which has been around since the first movies. Images can be projected over a distance to appear larger on a surface, typically a screen. This requires a powerful lamp. Can shadows be projected? This doesn’t work in the world of optics, but people have been doing it for a long time. Have you seen people ‘project’ their unresolved issues onto the world around them? In this way problems that are not dealt with are passed along to others and kept alive.

You know I came in the flesh and walked this earth as a man. Yet you also see me as transcendent. Is your view of me dominated by the former or the latter? Many believers refer to me as a personal savior. Do you understand that this requires some explanation? For every other application of this word refers to things that are exclusively your own property. Yet your salvation is about you becoming mine rather than me becoming yours. Can you extend this concept beyond my life here in time and space and make it universal?

Do you know the difference between a prayer and an incantation? Prayer is a part of your faith practice and incantation is not, although unbelievers do not draw any distinction between them. Prayer is a request made to me and an acknowledgment of my power. An incantation is an expression of “magical words” based on the belief that the power resides in the words. Your faith is relational and always a recognition of a power beyond yourself that you do not control. Yet I regard the prayers of my people and take seriously petitions offered in faith and humble gratitude.

Which principle do you think is more important: the same rules for everyone, or each man can only serve one master and will answer to him alone? Could both of these be true? The economy of grace is not like one run by a uniform code of civil and criminal justice. Doesn’t that sound like the law and don’t you claim that you live under grace rather than under the law? These are different concepts and it will be helpful for you to realize that every person is in a different place in their journey of grace.