Not topiary, but grafts!

"For the carnal mind is emnity against God. It is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can it be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God. But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you.

A couple things here. First, to go back to what flesh is. Since he's talking to people who are still alive and telling them that they aren't in the flesh, flesh doesn't mean, "those who are made out of meat cannot please God." I think that earlier I defined it as pretty much "those whose minds are controlled by what they want and not what God wants" (which is everyone unless they have been grafted to the vine of Christ). So it's basically saying minds don't do that what God wants are not pleasing to him, by definition.

I think this might be where Dan gets his idea that the passage is saying, if you think for yourself you'll go to hell, but if you go along with what other people say is "the Spirit", you're safe. This makes total sense if you don't believe that the Spirit has a real and independent existence. The effect would be, "What I want to think is bad. I will stop thinking that. The Church says that THIS is what is good to think, so I will think this instead." That's why the last idea is so important. You're not in the flesh if the Spirit of God dwells in you. Rather than being an external force twisting the plant into a certain shape, like in topiary, the Spirit is an internal force transforming the very nature of the plant, like a tree grafted onto a rootstock. This is very, very important, because I think it's easy for people to mistake the two, to actually try to be topiary, outwardly twisting themselves into crazy shapes to try to please God or be good, and not really growing in God or transforming their natures.

Of course, here we run into another issue, which I think I'll save for next time. This talks about being "in the flesh" and "in the Spirit". Can one be both? Can people, grafted onto the rootstock of Christ through the mercy of God, live in such a way that their minds are not transformed and are still set on the things of the flesh?