I've been thinking a lot lately. A lot about how we live, how living works, why we live, how we interact with God...
Like prayer.
I'm totally befuddled with prayer. I see the way the church prays (in America), and I see some references to prayer in scripture, but I don't see how we got from one to the other. I also know what kind of prayer feels right, and what kind feels wrong. Of course that's just my subconscious accessing all of my memories and then releasing chemicals to cause emotion based on previous results.
I've been dismantling of late, breaking down the old thoughts, and creating new ones. Deconstruction, they call it. I call it dismantling, my coworker calls it throwing rocks at the church, and he is too often right, in my case. There isn't anything wrong with throwing rocks at the church, but there is a problem when I don't rebuild what I destroy.
Prayer is one of these issues I haven't been able to reconstruct. In the end it all comes down to the way we interact with God, and the way He interacts in the world.
Let me get to the point. I'm tired of the 'It's in God's hands's and the 'God has someone perfect out there for you's and the 'God will open a door's, because frankly, its not (literally), and he doesn't, and he might not.
God created me, but indirectly. FIrst understand that I am in no way trying to limit God's power. The existence that I know through experience was entirely created by him. I believe in evolution. I'm not sure how it all worked out, I don't have gene maps plotted. But I believe in science... as much as science can be believed in. I believe science can tell us a lot, maybe nothing definitively, but a lot at least partially.
Some people think evolution takes away power from God, takes away from what He has done. I think evolution is intensely creative. I think that its more beautiful this way. I believe in redemption. And if God created us as static beings, then redemption doesn't really have space to happen. If we aren't static beings, and we change and grow over time (which is central in the message of Christ), then the amalgamation of all of the little redemptions in our life, plus the knowledge we gain from the generations before us, is evolution.
Back to the point, I absolutely do not see christianity as the memorization of Jesus' magic incantations. I think I've written before about how I hate the acronym Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth. But there is some (albeit little) truth there. First and foremost scripture is the telling of man's part in God's story. (A brief side note: narrative is pretty interesting when God is involved because he both is writing/narrating, and taking part in the narrative) But scripture also is our prime resource for information about the meshiach, Jesus.
Now I do think Jesus came with instructions. This is the important paragraph in this post, if you just mindlessly skim my posts (which is more than I would do myself) take a moment and read this paragraph slowly.
Jesus was present at the creation of the world (thanks beloved disciple!) therefore he would know how the world was made, and how it works. Jesus had insider knowledge to how life works. Then the word became flesh and joined our miserable existance. But Jesus lived life the way that the system of this world is set up for. He wasn't magical (though he did possess great powers), but was connected with God. I'm not trying to say we can live just as Christ did, that would be impossible, after all, the man was God.
The point is (if there is one) that Christianity seems to have turned into a religion that just believes. And even that belief exists in something that takes any burden of action away from us. We are conditioned to leave things to God, when we should be seeking correct action. When we don't view the world as being God's supernatural playground, it doesn't allow us to place the burden of action somewhere else, it falls squarely on us.
Then as God's hands and feet we will affect the world. We will expand the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is not some far off distant other-worldly place (the commercialized heaven), it is wherever God reigns. A kingdom is as large as it's king's reign.
I want to be the kingdom of God. I want everthing I touch to be the kingdom of God. I want my neighborhood, the city of Houston, my faith community, my friends to all be a part of the kingdom of God.
May love, God's love, infect you entirely. May you infect your community, and then the world. Live and love in this world, knowing that it can (and will) be a better place.
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3 comments:
I like where you are going with this post. Deconstruction is an essential part in our journey toward truth. Without it, we find ourselves unwavering and unable to be challenged in the way we understand our Creator God. We have taken what is infinite and incomprehensible (at least in totality) and turned it in to a set of factual statements. We have put God into a box in order that we might compartmentalize him along with our work, marriage, and hobbies. We have tried to contain and control the God, who infuses our life at every level, but we cannot contain him, we can only contain our false notions of him...and with this perverted conception of God, it should be no surprise when the fruit is spoiled.
So, we must deconstruct, the difficult question is how to rebuild?
There must be a point in our deconstruction where we get to the base level, to the foundational point in which we build afresh. The best, and only, starting point for this task is God’s Word.
You said that, “First and foremost scripture is the telling of man's part in God's story.” I would challenge this by saying that scripture is first and foremost God’s telling of His action in His story told through the mouths of men. We are not the main characters in the drama…God is, and the whole of scripture is God’s revelation of himself to the world. Without diving into the unending argument about inherency and infallibility, I will say that I firmly believe that all of scripture communicates, without wavering, the message God intended, namely, Himself, His love, power, justice, and grace. The reality of God and his self-revelation is where we must begin this journey.
Keep the thoughts coming…it is an exciting journey.
I think I have to disagree with you on your starting place for reconstruction. Scripture is a part of the deconstruction I have been going through as well, so I'm not sure how solid of ground it is.
Even if scripture hadn't been a part of my deconstruction, it definitely isnt the only starting place. I would start rebuilding from the ashes of everything that was left. Scripture is great, and supposedly easy to understand, versus nature or community. I personally find nature a much more telling medium than scripture (at first glance). Scripture is much harder for me to digest (mainly because I don't trust my limited knowledge of it. (of course this is where you start talking about the "holy spirit" or whatever you call it)
The point of my choice of words for scripture was to emphasize God's role. It is his story, but almost exclusively our part in it. I think we are agreeing here.
i think your post hits on the tension between god and man that is in a lot of our spiritual struggles. who's supposed to do things around here; us or god?
i don't think there's a neat answer. everything is in god's hands; to deny that is to deny his omnipotence. however, from our perspective, it certainly seems like we have a lot of control over outcomes in our lives and in the lives of those around us. so we are in tension, because we don't know what the answer to this fundamental question is.
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