Short story: Pastor Dennis Jones dreams bad dreams. Why?

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Pastor Dennis Jones was a good man, by any definition of the word. Happily married, with two kids, and a pastor at the local church. He had been a pastor for over thirty years. He never smoked, nor drank, and he was always polite, courteous, kindly-spoken, to all who he met. He never gambled, nor used foul language either. As I said, to all intents and purposes, Pastor Dennis was a very good man. Something constantly bothered Pastor Dennis though. It was that in his nightly dreams, Pastor Dennis was a very bad man. In some dreams, he smoked and drank, and cussed, at people, like a bartender would. In others, he would be having illicit affairs with ladies, be they neighbours, or parishioners, of his church. In some dreams, he was a punter, and worked as a bookie at a race track. In still more dreams, he was a petty thief, stealing books from libraries, and small things from shops. Another dream found him, on a train, without a train ticket, scared that he would be caught. This one repeated itself often. But it was a dream where he was a thug and a gangster that really upset him. He had carried out some drive-by shootings of some rival gang members, that were muscling in on his own territory, trying to make their presence felt there too. Pastor Dennis wondered then who it was that was responsible for all of these nightly sins that he was committing. Was it himself? Was something possessing him in his dreams, was it the Devil, doing this to him? Was it only his suppressed subconscious urges, bursting forth into his dreams? This would not be good either he thought. He must be suppressing such bad thoughts, and feelings, in his normal everyday life then. Or maybe. all of these dreams, referred to past lives of his, where indeed he was a bad and sinful person, but now, he had the chance to overcome all of this past karma and evil urges within himself. Pastor Dennis did not know the answer to this. It annoyed him constantly. He felt like that he was a hypocrite. Outwardly, he appeared as an upright, outstandingly good man, but inwardly, it seemed that he was a monster, a bad and nasty piece of work, indeed. What is the reason for this type of dream in people, and in supposedly good people, like Pastor Dennis was? Now God's love lives in all instances of itself, but our mind can stretch love apart, and hang it (love) on hooks in itself (i.e. in our mind), and then love becomes distorted because the hooks are either ways of past thinking, certain waywardly incorrect beliefs, or other inward dispositions, that we possess still inwardly. All dreams are showing you some aspect of yourself that you need to work on, otherwise, they would not come to you. Father Dennis here is a bad man to himself, as we all are, and he needs to realise that badness is in us, and that it will always try to come out to have a home in our life. The Pastor lives well outwardly, and so these evil urges arise in him to try to confuse him inwardly. He needs to see these are not him, but merely iconic representational archetypal themes/patterns of life and mankind generally,that he is being shown exist in all people, but do not have to be given into, even in dreams. And so, even in his dreams, Pastor Dennis can become strong enough to resist these and eventually represent his adoptedly good outward self inwardly in his dreams too, so that then indeed, he would be then, a genuinely good man, a real man of God, not just a man of himself, trying to be good outwardly, but retaining all of his bad thoughts, and adulterous urges inwardly. Only God can heal us of our sinful thoughts. We cannot do it on our own. Pastor Dennis needs to pray to God about himself to help himself to overcome these painfully sinful inward urges, planted in us from the original sin onwards. Photo Credit: The photo used here was freely sourced from the free media site: pixabay.com An outwardly good looking apple is sometimes just hiding the badness which is inside of itself.