Before we start over-reacting, let me set a scene (and bizarrely in my mind it all happens in an Irish accent): "That was a great service" Joe said ... meaning good contemporary music (for a bunch of amateurs), with 1/3rd of the congregation singing well, another 1/3rd mumbling their way through the words, and 1/3rd stoically waiting for it all to end. It almost makes me cry sometimes. So it's now after the service and here we have Jesus sitting down for pint of Guinness with Joe ... after all, Jesus is with us all the time, and I presume he'd drink Guinness, so why not?
"Oh Jesus, come on! I mean, I was in church, wasn't I? I came. I didn't leave early. I listened to the sermon. It's not like I'm ignoring you. Besides, I've got a voice like a frog."
"Yes, I know, I gave it to you. Well me and the rugby. And I know you were in church. I was too. But tell me, if you listened to the sermon, what was last week's about? Or this week's, for that matter?" "Huh? Um ... Ah ..." "Yeah, thought that'd be the response. I know you don't remember <sigh>. That's the problem with sermons ... words that flow from speaker to listener and then keep on going. It sort of misses what I meant about being a disciple ... you learn then do then learn then do then learn then do ....! When you engage you give a reality to the theoretical. Until you express what you know there's not much more reality there than a Leprechaun. So, anyway, have you done much expression recently?" "Of course ... I ... ummmm ..." "Ok, I know, remember the omniscient thing? Moving on ... or back as it may be: Worship. Tell me, what do you think of me? I really want to know." "You know what I think of you Jesus, you're omniscient." "Ah, now you sound like all those husbands whose wives complain that they never say 'I love you'. It also reminds me of that fish breakfast I had with Peter ... he also tried that angle on me." "Huh?" "Oh go look it up another time. Joe, let me tell you a little secret. I don't want you to tell me what you think for my benefit, I want you to do it for YOU, and for those around you. I'm the omnipotent and all that, I don't NEED anything, I'm the word that was before and will always be, I'm humble!" "Huh?" "Humble! I'm everything and I'm humble. Because being humble means being no more than you are, and no less than you are. Since I AM, no more and no less, I am humble. But you? Where's your humility?" "Huh?" "Oh good grief, is that the extent of your vocabulary? When you keep quiet in singing worship, you're saying I'm not worth the effort. When you don't acknowledge me with all your mind, body, soul, and strength, you're effectively claiming for yourself something of me. You're saying to me that you're more than I know you to be. You're trying to get an edge over ME. You're trying to say you're in charge. That I am not all important. That's not humble. That's stupid." "But, but ... what's so special about making a fool of myself while singing songs? It's not like it's a big event. Only lasts twenty minutes or so, and anyway, it's Sunday morning and I'm tired, and nobody notices what I'm doing" "Hmm, so birth lasts a few hours, getting married takes even less, and sex only lasts a short while if you're lucky. Even death is a matter of seconds! Does that make them unimportant? Don't you tell me about the value of time, I made time, I walk through time, time is not what's important. And by the way, people ARE affected by what you do! If you don't worship, your neighbour shrinks back too, so you're hurting them. It's only the one's deeply in love with me who actually keep the true church worship going." "Why are you getting so steamed up about this?" "Because it damages YOU, you twit. Don't you see, every time you pass on an opportunity to EXPRESS worship, you lose an opportunity to be who you were made to be. And every time you choose to not express yourself, you choose to hide a reality from yourself and from others. You hold back others! Anyway, making a fool of yourself is not something you'd have to put much effort into. Listen: there's two ways to approach worship. One way is to start with what you know in your heart to be real -- draw on those all-too-rare moments when your eyes were really open and you experienced me being right there. And from there you tell your mind to get it's act into gear and choose to put some thoughtful expression to the heart's feelings. Music is great for that, it adds a rich meaning of words. The other option is to start in the mind; take what you KNOW is the Truth, not what you'd like to be the truth. Then tell your heart to stop being so afraid of emotion and get with it. Music's great, because it catches the heart in a net of melody and merges it with your mind. It doesn't matter where you start. It only matters where you end ... in expression! Stop short of that and you may as well have never begun. Forget about what others think of you. It's me, the omnipotent one and all that, who is standing right there in your face. Get it?" "Huh?"
1 Comment
God is nothing, ... a strong statement. Now hold your reaction, and let me first lead off on two related developments.
First is "New Secularism" (sorry about that, another big word!). Along with its close cousin of "New Atheism", this is building a militant anti-faith attitude that pervades our society while failing even its implied principle of tolerate everything but intolerance. Second is the increasing sense that "Christianity is either degenerating into a pathetic version of itself or, more significantly, Christianity is actively being colonized and displaced by quite a different religious faith". This essay captures it nicely, despite it's headline tending to hyperbole. OK, so with the stage so set, let me return to my opener and complete it: "God is nothing, if God is not definitive." Think about that for a moment. It's a basic logical statement. God, by the popular definition and common use of the word, is perfect, complete, flawless, all knowing, all powerful, and beyond and above our universe. Something that is perfect is, by definition, definitive! If God is not definitive, he's not God. It's hard to think of anything that's actually perfect. The closest I know to perfection is the object recently created as a potential new standard definition of a kilogram; a near perfect sphere of silicon. And note, its "near perfect", they are trying to reach perfection in order to define a standard. If it's not perfect, it cannot be a definitive reference. So God, by definition, is definitive. And that also means unchanging, because if you change perfection, you no longer have a definition, you only have an approximation. Yet this world, this culture, this post-modern and post-Christian society seems hell-bent (excuse the pun) on reducing God to an approximate definition. The purpose is, of course, to make space for our deviancies. Our Christian culture is not inclined to talk about a perfect definition for fear we may offend someone. We want to say "Oh, murder is wrong", "love is good", and "in between its gray". But we really, really don't want to say where the boundaries are. Now I agree, some boundaries are fuzzy. I'm also passionate that we need to be compassionate; that we need to treat everyone with love, with sensitivity, and without (our) judgment, and be what we need to be to reach all for Christ. But we run this one huge and massive risk; by not showing the sharp edge of God's definitiveness, we also tacitly endorse imperfection. We become complicit in the secularization of Christianity, in turning its definitiveness into a muddy dilution that hides God's holiness behind a cover -- every time that we go silent and back away from a situation where we see the acceptance of compromising God's definition. Its all very understandable, because if we're definitive then people think we're trying to make the definition in order to be their superior ... they think that because that's actually what everyone tries to do. We all want to be the definer of right and wrong. But by definition, God is the definer despite what I think about it. So, if Christians keep silent about what God's perfection is when it comes to things like recreational sex, hedonistic materialism, late term abortion, or our pervasive apathies that abuse the poor, then we are tacitly endorsing these as ok. We convey a message of a pathetic version of an imperfect definition as being normal, that all this is part of the grand new Christianity for a new age. And I fully understand this. I do it too. Because I am scared of hurting people, alienating people, and being seen to judge people. Yet strangely, I'm also willing to be very definitive in so many other contexts. You say "climate change is a hoax" and I'll jump all over you for your contribution to unethical multi-generational consequences. But when you say "recreational sex is ok" then the chances are I'll duck behind some nonsensical muttering. And this pervades all our "modern Christianity"; you say "I'm a loyal and faithful Christian and all religions lead to God", but the church pretends not to hear. God wields a two edged sword; perfect love (which we are all so passionate about emphasizing) and perfect justice (which we all energetically run away from). It cleaves perfection from mud and defines the edges. It does not purposely destroy, but draws a line between the perfect and imperfection; it says "this is God-nature, and that is not." Can I stand back and in the same breath say the sky is red, up is down, and I'm a Christian? And a more difficult question: when do I speak up about the real boundaries, and when do I keep silent? [UPDATE: Also read this essay] I love metaphor ... its penetrates our defenses and conveys so many layers of meaning. Yet metaphor also distills the essence of a truth and allows us to easily grab hold of it. No wonder Jesus used metaphors, analogies, similarities, parables, and stories of all kinds. Our society doesn't like to expend much effort of the brain; we're a society of the obvious, the blatant, and crass. And so our metaphors (at least in the popular public spheres) are usually quite shallow; only the minority seem enticed to engage in seeking deeper layers of meaning. I love metaphor, perhaps that's why my blog doesn't get massive hits (or perhaps I just write badly, or maybe I'm just too twisted). But that doesn't matter, because I write for my own hubris (see sidebar). Here are two visual "metaphors" I've recently encountered. The first is quirky, and perhaps that's why I like it. But I see in it a number of things, all of course conditioned by who I am and what I'm thinking. I see first a message to learn to love language, because it's so powerful, and we should not be afraid of big words. Its words that enable us to think. Then I see that the image of an African person ... that's quite rare. I've been in deepest Africa and seen billboards with white European models. So the second message is to use our words without racial preconceptions. Third, I think of the phrase "Embrace the Word", which on the face of it means don't be scared of big words. But of course, to the Christian, the "Word" has a special meaning, and our lives are purposed to embrace the Word. And one more ... I look at the picture and I start to think, what are the individual words in the text; are they edifying or destructive? Am I embracing the wrong words? Where do I look for my information, is it trustworthy, and how do I know? Here's a second metaphor. You can click on the image to read the full story, but in essence its about the inbreeding of tigers to get white tigers ... they're special, rare, valuable to zoos, and beautiful. They're also a product of a recessive gene that makes them cross-eyed with skeletal disorders and other deformities. Yet zoos breed them for the popularity factor. That makes me think of the modern Christian. We are so focused on appearing to be beautiful - physically, socially, and intellectually. But its a superficial beauty, and inside we're deformed and damaged, hurting and hidden. Yet society encourages our incestuous inbreeding of these "beauty" traits, saying we need to be like this or that in order to be beautiful. We're being bred like a white tiger, and end up cross-eyed. So there's some metaphors ... go out yourself and hunt for them, it's a great game! And perhaps you'll metamorphose yourself into something truly beautiful. A desk, a clock, a picture, a cap, a cup, a telephone book, and sunglasses. A man from a different generation, an eminent surgeon, a professor, a silent man, a wise man, a stubborn man, someone who was organized, firm in faith and belief, yet brave enough to face doubt. Memories of a family, a legacy among children. An experience that encompassed deep joy and tragic sorrow. A father who died moments earlier. The previous post was about seeing linkages … and I promised an answer (listed here at the end). Its that the linkages are all symptoms of something much more fundamental - something I already know (at least when it's pointed out to me), yet daily I am barely aware of it. The problem is, I pattern-match to what I think should be there! So what's this got to do with God and life? Lots! All my senses are tuned to pattern matching. We hardly know how to talk without saying “It looks like”, “It tastes like”, “It smells like”, “It feels like” and “It sounds like”. Our awareness is strongly based on association. Can you look at the following WITHOUT reading the words? Our abilities are so good that its almost impossible to not read the words, to really see the lines for their shape and curvature alone. We don't read words, we scan for patterns. And we apply it to people! Then, when something doesn't fit our patterns, it engenders xenophobia, discrimination, racism, sexism, and a host of other 'isms. I was re-reminded of this by watching Vi Hart's “Twelve Tones” video (she would perhaps shoot me for associating that with religion - sorry Vi Hart - or maybe not, I don't know what she believes. But consider the idea of trying to hear a sound as a sound, and not as part of something else. Try look at something without forming the label in your mind. And especially, try looking at a person without putting them into a preconceived box. In the movie “Her”, Samantha (the newly-sentient operating system) talks of feelings that she does not have words for … she has no label for the pattern she's formed. That's not what I'm talking of here. Samantha has already formed a pattern for the feelings, recognizing them as a 'thing', the frustration is only because these are outside human experience, and so she doesn't have a language to describe them. Of course things are things, there's nothing wrong with a thing being a thing. But an elegant table leg is also a piece of wood, cellulose, a dead tree, the expression of a craftsman, a structural support and so much more. Yet we see … a table leg. How boring. This is an interesting challenge for the Christian in two important ways. We try fit to God into our preconceived / indoctrinated shapes, and we superimpose our shapes onto other people. NOTE: This is the opposite of the two greatest desires God has for us: to love God with all out heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love others as we love ourselves. This requires us to NOT impose our shapes and instead see whats really there. Because God fits no cookie-cutter shape among a pantheon of gods, and people are never clones of our mental categories, and we know we're unique (right?) so we should love others as being unique! Yet we have the cheek to complain when the boundaries of our preconceptions are mis-aligned with what we encounter. Isn't this the source of so many troubled relationships? We want others to fit our comfortable shapes, and when they don't we get angry, complain, and try to impose our idea of who they should be. As when a spouse emerges from the infatuation of accommodating their partners every wish, and begins to express his or her individual identity. When we enter into relationship it is as two whole beings, nothing is subsumed in the other, and together we make a new whole that is greater than the sum of it's parts … at least that's what should happen. So when the wife fails to match the husbands expectation, we get spousal abuse. And when the husband no longer fulfills the ideal of the wife, we get affairs. And vice-versa. Before you know its there's deceit and fracture everywhere. We do this even more with God! We repeatedly make God in an image of what we think he should be. The cheek of it … trying to fit the infinite into our tiny preconceptions. And so we hear the all too common statement that starts “I would never worship a God who would ...”. This is immense arrogance. To make it more awkward, God is completely unchanged by our dislike that he exceeds the boundaries of our notions. God is. Full stop. Our preferences have no bearing on the matter. Whereas in human relationship we might change somewhat to please one we love, God will not change for us. How could perfection change, why should perfection change simply because we don't understand it. To make it even worse, because God just is, God does not fight back, and so any fractured relationship with him is solely our fault. Now turn it all around and try, try as hard as you can to step away from your notions of how it should be, try think about how God sees us. You and I would complain bitterly if someone tried to make us conform to a shape (even while we put others into shapes) -- because we know we're unique. And this is how God sees us … unique. God can look at writing and see unique lines beyond the words. He can see a table for the enormity of all it represents. He sees us not as clones, but as individuals. Perhaps that's what heaven (or hell) will be like, when we can see everything for what it is. Don't get me wrong; shapes are important – land, tree, beach, lion, bird, snake. The problem is when it's only another lion, or only another bird, or only another person. Thats when we stop sensing the uniqueness of reality. Wisdom, truth, love; these are all to do with what's not within the preferred shapes, they're all to do with seeing uniqueness beyond the shapes. Growing up, really growing up, is when we see more than the cookie-cutter shape we'd like. Maturity is reached when we can no longer find a shape that encompasses God, when we comprehend God is not in a shape, he contains all shapes. (Responses to the "things" linked in the prior post below)
Spending 11 hours in an airplane does odd things to the mind. Whether it's the reduced air pressure or the enforced isolation, I don't know, but it's an unusually thought provoking experience. One finds Truth in unexpected places. My mind saw links. My mind posed the question of "what connects these things?" And these links helped me broaden my understanding of God. Watch , read, and/or follow the links below and see if you can figure it out. (My answer in the next blog post)
And there's so much more I could link to. Paintings, sculpture, stories and experiences, jokes, and even maths. But it all depends on one thing ... more about that later.
Church (the institution) is a pain. Systemic abuse I've been known to call it. I've been recently discussing this with two others. One is a church minister in another town, working effectively within the structures. One is a friend in another church who's struggling with the internal conflicts and constraints. For myself, I've been in that latter place for awhile. In our discussions I think we're all circling the same stone statue and describing it in the words of our unique experiences. We actually have a good idea of what should be - and we're struggling with the imperfections. This suggests that the our wrestling with church is a more matter of finding God's perspective on our personal issue for what organization should be in my life. If we have no organization (we're de-organized?), that puts us into a mode of solo activity and any cooperation that happens is simply opportunistic and ad hoc. So, while we all carry a measure of solo responsibility, we are really made for relationship -- and isn't that what church is supposed to be? One has to step aside from only talking about our complaints of a broken institution (because anything human is incomplete), put aside (but not ignore) the systemic abuses, be wise as serpents and innocent as doves, and examine our created relational nature in the context of our unique God-positioned place. Easy to say. Functioning in our created purpose requires humility -- I know that's a no-brainer (even if it doesn't happen much). Yet humility by my definition is "to not be more than I am, and equally importantly to not be less than I am, which together presupposes I know what I am." So here I'm simply trying here to rethink this church-thing as a lay person working from first principles:
So, to be completely pragmatic, how do I actually apply this to the lay person's experience of church? I have a few options: a) walk away from Christianity (the Dalek approach - "you will be exterminated"), b) drink the Kool-aid (the Borg approach - "you will be assimilated"), c) be passive (the all-too-common approach) d) go solo (the Star Wars approach - we're playing "Hans Solo"?), e) engage from the inside (the "infiltrator's" approach, but not subversively), f) go independent (a response which I admit to finding attractive) Options (a)-(c) are problematic. Option (d) is not what we are created to be. Option (e) is where many of us end up as (as I currently am) and which works to varying degrees, depending on the proximity of disruptive systemic failures. This also has very real (sometimes surmountable) barriers with notable degrees of frustration, both from the system directly and from the apathy and resistance of the people in the system, all compounded by my own imperfections. Option (f) is a territory that's exciting and adventurous, yet fraught with the dangers of heresy and ego, bedeviled by practical and logistical challenges and limits. If successful, in time it creates a new system, because in seeking community (our innate desire) we inevitably involve more and more broken people which organically creates a broken system. It's interesting that Jesus railed against the institution, but never walked away from the institution. So, where does this leave me? Either I go solo (not a God-willed path, I believe), or I engage in some level of institution, be it one that I am / will be instrumental in forming, or one already established. That is the choice open to me. Absent any clear direction from God, I don't think there is a right or wrong about doing either (its "planned freedom"). The call as a Christian is to be engaged in the totality of discipleship; that is, be both a disciple and a teacher. For that is what it means to be in community traveling together on the arrow of time; at any one time we may act with different emphases on being the disciple or being the teacher, but never as only disciple or only teacher - for to be a learner is to also be a doer, and to be a doer necessitates being a learner. So my question becomes: at my stage of life, is the disciple or teacher my most dominant external role? And where then can I, in the grace of God (bearing in mind the definition of grace), best "be community" with the skills, desires, and talents that God has made in me. For the last 5+ years it has mostly been my church; teaching, leading worship, strategic planning, etc., during which time I've equally grown as a disciple in so many ways. But I can see a time in the future when this situation may change. I've a strong desire to engage with post-Christendom society to find a natural language that communicates Christ in a way unlike what one finds in church. I'm deeply frustrated by apathy in the church. Yet I also yearn for more and deeper collective worship (in the fullest sense of the word). I'm hungry for a community context to be what I think God may be leading me toward. It might emerge where I am if the systemic issues are addressed, but equally it may emerge through new external opportunities in addition to, or in place of the current system. My minister friend: he's found a context within the system where he can explore with freedom what God created him to be and do (do-be-do-...) My other friend: He's in the grip of a changing context, and the dust will have to settle before one can clearly see. Me: I'm anticipatory for myself ... for seasons change between times and places. So ends my day! |
Why?
Probably the best therapy is to express yourself. Why do you think psychiatrists make you lie on the couch and talk, while all they do is murmur "hmmm", "uhuh", or "go on"? Archives
May 2017
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