Lessons from the Green Glass Door
I’ve been playing this game with my kids called The Green Glass Door. It’s a verbal game that you can play at any time. It’s pretty silly, but it serves as a great example of spiritual principles.
There’s a secret rule about what can go through the Green Glass Door that the players have to figure out. They do so by asking if x object can go through it or not, and those who know the rule answer yes or no.
So one of the players says - can I go through the Green Glass Door? And the other person says No.
Can ketchup? No.
Eventually you get to some confusing things like -
Can paper go through the Green Glass Door?
Can a book? Yes.
Most people will eventually figure out what the rule is, but they can only figure it out through examples, or inductive reasoning.
Can pizza go through the green glass door? Yes.
A bottle? Yes.
A horse? No.
A rabbit? Yes.
Money? No.
Currency? Yes.
An orange? No
An apple? Yes.
So the rule is - pause if you want to figure it out yourself —
Things that have the same letter consecutively (ie. Green - Glass - Door). So it doesn’t have anything to do with the object, its’ the name of the object that matters.
Now at first I played it jokingly with the kids. There was no chance that they would guess the rule.. But it’s still fun for them and keeps them distracted for a little while.
Now, both of my kids know their letters and I have actually explained the rule to my 4 year old. I can tell that she understood it when I spelled the words out and showed her. However, without knowing how words are spelled - there’s no way for her to figure out on her own if the thing can go through the Green Glass Door or not.
So, even though she knows and understands the principle - she doesn’t gain any practical advantage in the game - she can still only understand it through examples.
My 2 year old on the other hand, does not understand the rule. Even though she can recite the alphabet and identify some letters. She has even else of a grasp of how words are formed than my 4 year old, and no interest in spelling.
So how do I relate this to the spiritual?
Well, there are a lot of questions that we have about the spiritual world.
Why does blood ritually purify things?
Why are some animals considered clean for offering or consumption and others not?
What are spiritual beings such as angels and how do they operate?
How do blessings and curses work?
What effect does baptism have?
Some things, we can only understand in examples - we have to be told yes to this, no to that, here’s how you do this, etc., and we don’t know why at all.
There are some things that we can kind of understand, and maybe there is a rule or principle that we can grasp, but the reason behind it is still a mystery. For example, we know that animals which have cloven hooves and chew the cud are considered clean. God tells us to eat unclean animals is detestable to Him. These are principles and rules that we can grasp. But it is unclear why the animals without these traits are detestable.
How is something cleansed with blood? We don’t know why it works or what it even means to be ritually pure, but we know how to perform certain rituals to make it happen.
This is like my kids who know the rule and can memorize a list of things that can or can’t go through the Green Glass Door and even know the principle behind it, but without the explanation it would be entirely beyond them, and even with it they only somewhat understand.
We can see the principles and examples laid out in Scripture and try to piece things together.
One reason we have a hard time grasping the spiritual is that we are hyper focused on the material. We imagine spiritual things in terms of our physical experiences.
I think that we can avoid that by thinking about spiritual things in terms of the meaning that they represent and not the physical thing that they most correspond to. Spiritual beings can often be better understood as concepts or ideas. The realms of thought and spirit may be less separate than we imagine them. Consider that we call the vibes that we get from something a “spirit”. Demonic forces are described as principalities, powers, as well as strongholds, imaginations (or arguments) and high things that exalt themselves above the knowledge of God.
These are the same things as ideologies, philosophies, systems. The spiritual realm and the beings that inhabit it can manifest in tangible ways, but primarily exist as ideas or something like mental structures.
In preparing the notes for this video Deconverted Man posted a question about whether politics are treated like religions, which I would say yes, because there’s functionally no difference between them. From outside, it the main feature of a religion is the god or gods that it worships - but those gods have a character and messages which form ideals, laws, etc. And vice versa politics are by and large based on belief more than verifiable data. We can try to use data in creating policies, but that doesn’t make the ideas, assumptions, and motives behind them any more data-driven. Sam Harris would disagree, but I don’t think you can derive policy or morality from data, you can only use data in determining course of action to enact policy/morality.
Anyway, that’s a tangent.
The spiritual realm is intangible, but so is the mind. Maybe it can be best described as our mind being the body’s primary interface with the spiritual, but also doesn’t limit spiritual beings from manifesting or performing things in the physical.
I feel like the mind is thought of as something that is corrupted in Christianity whereas the spirit is the good part. The mind and the heart are used interchangeably in Scripture and it is often quoted “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it?”
However, it is evident to me that everything spiritual, good or bad takes place in the mind.
It seems to me that the spirit of a person is simply a neutral animating force which comes from God.
In fact, the Christian’s heart and mind have been renewed. Paul says “So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.”
Ok, so I don’t want to go on too long here - but I hope this serves as food for thought.