18. The Liberation of Man from Innate Need¶
By the way in which man is created, it becomes clear that liberation must be personal to each individual. A spirit can only control itself from within, and so only the individual can apply the new life created by God. It is available like a medicine or a remedy, but can only be taken by the individual. However, if a person does not receive it through faith and make it his life, then the creation of the new life by God was in vain for him personally.
Liberation and redemption from innate error is only possible in cooperation with God. God created the means; the application is subject to the individual. Therefore, man himself is responsible for whether he is liberated. No one can do anything in his place except man himself. However, this requires a certain ability of self-knowledge, awareness of the laws of nature and the realization of spiritual dependence on God in order to do so.
I would like to explain the process of accepting the new life through faith based on my personal experience.
Ever since I was a child, I had the idea that having a happy family would be the fulfillment of my life. So, I got married at a young age to make this dream come true quickly. However, things turned out differently than expected.
My first spiritual need is harmony. So my expectation of my wife was quite high to satisfy this desire. There were essentially three needs that I expected my wife to fulfill:
1. I wanted her to understand me. That she understands my innermost feelings and responds to them.
2. I wanted her to listen to me when I had something to say. However, she already knew everything better and I didn't get a chance to speak.
3. This was an extraordinary wish, namely that she should smile in the morning when she woke up. As a person in need of harmony, I lived off her smile.
In the error of my heart, it seemed natural to me that my wife should satisfy these needs. However, since my expectations were not met, I was unhappy in the relationship. Growing up as a Christian, I had learned that marriage is not something that can be abandoned at will, but is for life. So, I resigned myself to this situation, without inwardly accepting it.
When you are unhappy, you try to satisfy your needs by other means. That's how I became addicted to films, the internet and sports. The more dissatisfied I was with my wife, the stronger the addictions became.
At the same time, I was very active in my church community because I had wanted to be a pastor since childhood. I got involved wherever I could, without knowing that these activities were also just an attempt to fulfill the purpose of my life. However, I found no satisfaction anywhere. My job as a doctor in the clinic, my activities in the church community, at home with my family - none of this fulfilled me. My expectations of my environment were not fulfilled. I had no idea why I was so unhappy, driven and restless.
So, at the end of 2002, after I had completed my specialist degree, I came to the conclusion that I needed a break and decided to take a sabbatical year. I wanted to improve my family situation so that I could continue in my marriage.
To make the picture of our family at the end of 2002 clear, another aspect should be mentioned. In 1998, a family with 6 children broke up in our parish. The question arose as to what should become of the abandoned children aged 7-17. Under God's guidance, we quickly decided to take the children into our family and became foster parents to 6 children. This situation was stressful, but very fulfilling for me. I loved the children and spent a lot of time doing all kinds of activities with them.
This new situation, although enriching, still didn't make me happy. The dream of a wife who would make me happy was constantly in my thoughts. But because I didn't want to give up the children, I took this year off at the end of 2002. I wanted to use every means at my disposal to be happy in the family. I resolved to be more responsive to my wife so that she would change and we could continue as a family.
However, the plan didn't work out. After the first few months of 2003, I came to the conclusion that I couldn't change my wife. After the ideas I had at the time, I had no choice but to divorce and look for another woman who would make me happy. In my distress, I was also prepared to give up the foster children just to finally be happy. I was 39 years old at the time and thought that if I didn't do it now, I would be unhappy for the rest of my life.
I made a new plan to separate at the end of the school year. I terminated the tenancy agreement for the house where we lived with the children. The children, who were still minors, would move in with their mother, I would move in with my mother and my wife could also move in with her parents. So, everyone would have been taken care of and would have had a place to stay.
Even before the plan to separate was made in the summer of 2003, we had planned a trip to the USA to visit a family where the couple were also marriage counselors. The trip was firmly booked and although my decision to separate was clear, we flew on the agreed date. After an approximately 3-hour marriage counseling session on June 1, 2003, in which I firmly defended my position and would not agree to a reconciliation, a thought came to me, which was: "If you will keep my commandments, I will take care of your needs."
It was an unusual thought that pleased me at first because I was offered the prospect that I could be happy. However, when I thought about it further, I realized the condition for satisfying my needs: "Keep the commandments". As a Christian, I knew the 10 commandments from my childhood, and in my case the 7th commandment, which said not to break the marriage, applied.
I argued in my mind that I had been faithful in the family for 20 years, at least physically, but hadn't been happy. And now I should stay in the family so that I could be happy? I didn't understand and so I stopped thinking about it.
A week later, we sat down with the marriage counselor family to say goodbye. We were 10 people in a room together, my wife and I with three of our foster children aged 14, 16 and 18 and the family with their three children of a similar age. It was supposed to be a brief exchange of ideas about our time together. During this conversation, the father of the family turned to me and suddenly asked, "Are you determined"... When I heard those words, I was sure he was asking me if I was determined to separate from the family because I had always communicated that clearly up to that point. Without waiting for the rest of the question, I answered loud and clear with a "yes". However, his question was the other way around: "Are you determined to stay with your family?" My loud and clear "yes" could not be ignored. The children and I were astonished because they knew I was determined to separate, not to stay. I had found myself in a dilemma that I needed a solution to. I had said yes to something I didn't mean at all.
I only had the choice of immediately withdrawing the "yes" or accepting it. I don't know what moved me to back the yes to staying with the family, but I did it inwardly. At that moment, God's promise was fulfilled that my needs would be met if I stayed with the family.
I can't explain how it happened, but my great hunger to be loved by a woman was gone. My obsessions and my restlessness came to an immediate end. I gained an inner peace that has not left me since. All the addictions that had accompanied me in my unhappiness and against which I had fought unsuccessfully until then were gone. To this day, more than 20 years later, they have not reappeared.
The experience was so impressive that I can't really describe it. My whole inner life had been changed; I was freed from an inner prison. My body also responded and I was healed from decades of back pain. My migraines, which I had had since the age of 15, have since disappeared.
I consider this experience to be the exchange of life. I gave up my old life, which was characterized by the misconception that another person had to make me happy, and received the New Life that God had created in His Son into my heart. It connected me to the Source of love and peace and so my needs could be met.
In the time before this experience, I sometimes had great doubts as to whether God really existed or not. I couldn't grasp Him and sometimes wondered where He was. However, this experience gave me a clear indication that He exists and is the Source of all happiness.
To finally dispel my doubts, He also gave me irrefutable proof of His existence in the now 20 years of practical experience. Man's spiritual desire for love, freedom, justice, security etc. can only be satisfied by Him and from Him. The fulfillment of our spiritual needs certainly does not take place via or through other people or anywhere in nature. It is impossible for us to have obvious needs for which there is no way and no source from which they can be met. God has arranged it so that He alone can fulfill the spiritual needs of man.