Sometimes when I am groggy from sleep, drifting in or out I find myself behaving like an unthinking animal. I don’t know if this is unique to me or if any of you have experienced this kind of lack of consciousness or not. I don’t have any forethought in this state. It is just beyond sleep and just ahead of being awake. Those moments are fleeting. They leave me with a sense of being less than a human. I wonder if this is how some of the higher functioning mammals think and feel? Like the gorilla that could do sign language. She communicated from a mind with a different type of thinking, understanding, and desires. I don’t like being subject to a lesser state. It is disconcerting.
Before we are saved, we think only as a person can under the noetic effects of original sin and bondage to that sinful state. We operate in a state that is less than. Our unregenerate minds can only conceive of evil and it continually. We see our fellow men lost in the dark and shine a light for them to see. We hope they will orientate themselves to and by that light.
Even those of us who have been saved still perceive and process from a state of being less than what we are to be. The noetic effects of sin corrupt us as well. We wait for glorification one day. We wait for a time when our abilities to perceive and process without the effects of sin will be fulfilled. How would we look back on our previous mortal existence? How would we as creatures know and perceive our Creator in truth? What would it be like? I know that I can’t know everything even after glorification. I also know that I won’t know things the same fallen way that I know them now. To know Jesus now is a miracle wrought by God. I can’t imagine what it will be like to know Him without this sinful flesh and corruption of mind.
Snyder's Soapbox 