Fiery Tornado Still Calls Us To Follow

 The second book of the Bible, Exodus, is the story of the creation of the Hebrew nation 3300 years ago in the ancient Near East. It has an interesting image of the presence of God as a tower of smoke in the daytime and a tower of fire at night.  Wherever the Presence led, the new nation was to pack up there tents and follow.  The Presence of God led His chosen people through scorching desert where there was neither food or water, yet as they followed, He always provided their every need.

God is still on the move today.  He hovers by your place of prayer before dawn, calling you from oblivion to enter His Presence.  There is nothing more rewarding to me than basking in His loving Presence.  Wherever He calls, there I will follow. I love His touch.  I love to feel Him smiling on me.  If His Presence enters a prison, I will follow just to be with Him there. If He shifts to the realty office, I will run, laughing, bringing my deed. If He moves into a hospice, there I will follow.  If He moves to the inner city, there I will live.  I just want to cling to His loving Presence and bask in His beauty, channeling His love to whoever is there.

"God became man that man might become God" -Athanasius

When Christianity was still pure, white hot brilliant in the crucible of Roman persecution, the leading thinkers of the church had a remarkable catch phrase:

“God became man that man might become God”.  They did not mean it literally of course, but were just using exaggeration to convey an important point: God came into humanity in Jesus, but at the same time Jesus brought humanity into God.

Jesus was one with the Father in a significantly different way than are we, in that Jesus was God, while we are not.  We also are one with God, but relationally, not ontologically. We are not God. God is not us. That is the difference between Jesus and ourselves. 

Now Jesus is a model, the first of billions to follow His path. Similar to how God and Jesus were One, the loving Presence of God in the being of Jesus and the being of Jesus in the loving Presence of God, so are we who have been reconciled to Him through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Yet because God is not limited by a physical form He can completely inhabit our entire being like water and wine can intermingle or coinhere in one clay jug.  As we respond to God’s drawing near to us, available only through the advocacy of Jesus, and we draw near to Him and surrender to Him and embrace Him, His loving Presence enters into ours and ours into His, and thus, relationally, we become one in love.  We surrendering all to Him, He delegating all authority to us in loving trust as He thinks His thoughts through us and feels His desires through us to do His loving will.

Is the World the Body of a Slaughtered Deity?

What does the Bible’s first chapter really mean?  Understanding only comes when you first understand the religion of the original audience. 4000 years ago in the ancient Near East most people thought there were many gods, jealously and lustfully feuding and carousing, mirroring human society. People thought there had been numerous bloody wars in the heavens, divine juntas and revolutions between the gods. In the process the gods had slaughtered one godess in battle, butchered her body and made the parts of the cosmos from that. Then the gods got tired of all the work involved in running the world so made humans to be their slaves.

The Bible opens with a markedly different picture.  There are no other gods. There is only the One who has always existed.  There is no gory pantheon, no wasted battlefield from former eons of divine conflict. No. This One simply speaks into being all that is, and it is perfect from the start.  And humans are not a mere after thought, slaves created by the cruel pantheon motivated by laziness.  No. Where the religions of the day thought their wood and bronze sculptures were manifestations of the capricious pantheon, the Bible’s first chapter takes a radically different track: it is HUMANS whom the ONE God has created to be His instrument and representative in the world. Rather than slaving for the gods, dressing and feeding idols of wood, stone and bronze; the Bible instead introduces humanity as the noble representatives of the One, who delegates to them the benevolent care and good governance over all creation.

Spiritual Warfare?

I have a problem with so many people using this term because of the violent, militaristic connotations.  They put on a loud, imperious voice and shout at the devil, waving an imaginary sword.

In one of C.S. Lewis fantasy stories an omnipotent but all-loving lion, Aslan, creates a new world, Narnia. But an imperious being from another world gains access to Narnia and imposes a never ending winter on Narnia, enslaving the beautiful creatures of Aslan and turning any who defy her into stone. 

When 4 children from earth “stumble” into Narnia, one is deceived by the witch, betrays his brother and sisters and ends up also enslaved by the witch.  However, Aslan outwits the witch and her simple magic by allowing her to kill him. His deeper magic is released, He comes back to life and winter in Narnia ends, the creatures whom the witch turned to stone are released and the witch is deposed,  fleeing into obscure exile.  The four children from earth are crowned as kings and queens of Narnia and a long age of peaceful summer ensues.

The Biblical version of Christ’s life by St. Luke portrays Jesus as the powerful creator incarnate, returned to transform the frozen and enslaved earth. From birth through His adult ministry Luke portrays Him in opposition with the evil one.  Jesus is tempted to use His power to help people politically or through charity.  Yet His stated purpose is to suffer and ultimately die.  And it is in His refusal of fame and power and comfort to the point of death that He gains His ultimate victory over the evil one and decisively breaks the back of the curse holding the world in its grip, in His death finally taking away the barrier between us and God, the record of our wrong-doings, and instead reconciling us to God finally so we can enter into God’s loving Presence, and His Presence into us.

The way of Jesus is our model.  Our greatest victory in this “spiritual warfare” is as we “die”.  It is daily.  To walk away from fame, from esteem, from comfort, from intimacy, from physical delights, from entertainment, from freedom, from security, from power, from control, from influence, from everything we rely on for stability and comfort and fulfillment.  But only love can motivate us to do so. And this love is not from within. It is the love of God that inspires and motivates us to surrender all to Him just so we can bask in the glorious, brilliant warmth of His smiling, lover’s gaze. We sacrifice everything just to be close to God, and He brings us back to life on a higher plane, transforming the world by His love incarnate through us.

Faith is Weird

God doesn’t want robots.  He could force His presence on us but that would be a kind of violation. Forced intimacy. We have laws against that sort of thing.

A lot of regular folk in this world would marry a millionaire, but not for love.  You really can’t blame rich people for wanting to marry other rich people.  They’re just looking for true love.  But God is like this billionaire in love with a garbage picker in Mumbai. And His capacity for love is infinite so He desires all of us.

 

God isn’t interested in a relationship where people only think about what they can get from Him, or because they are afraid of Him, or just because His infinite power and knowledge and ever-presence is overwhelming.  God doesn’t want to overpower us.

God only invites us.  If He were to make Himself visible, do all these amazing miracles all the time, we would be COERCED to surrender to His desire for us.  God wants people who truly love Him for who He is. That’s why there’s faith.

Psalm 11:7 says:
"The LORD is good and loves good deeds;
those who do them will live in his presence." Kerry's Version

...and those who live in His presence will do them...

It is only by clinging to God's presence moment by moment throughout the day that He enables us to do truly supernatural good deeds.  We cultivate an awareness of God's loving presence all day long as we practice paying attention to Him, constantly adoring and thanking Him, gazing in to His beautiful face with our inward eyes, clinging to his neck with our spiritual arms as we let him carry us along. Encountering His love thus motivates us to reach out and love others, especially those we tend to avoid and ignore; yet at the same time doing good to others, so that it costs us, is in itself another way to cling to God's loving Presence. 

Communing with God lets us love others, and loving others lets us commune with God.

Corporate Salmon Feedlots Poisoning Wild Salmon

Just heard a very good radio documentary on CBC Radio's "Ideas" program. A marine biologist named Alexandra Morton is helping rally the people of Canada to protect them from their government's management policies in regards to salmon farming and the pollution they pump out.

Listen to the interview: http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/2011/01/10/saving-salmon/

Check out Alexandra's websites for yourself:
http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/alexandra_morton/2011/01/the-year-of-the-wild-salmon-people.html
http://www.wildsalmonpeople.ca/

Why Is Smoking Still Legal In Canada?

The federal government has the power to make all kinds of dangerous substances illegal, like crystal meth and ecstacy. So why don't they make smoking illegal? The only answer I can come up with is that some very powerful and rich owners of tobacco interests have the politicians firmly in their grip. If the politicians want to stay in power, they have to "strike a deal with the devil". What can we do to force the politicians to make smoking illegal in 2011?

1. Network civil activist groups like the Spirit Bear coalition and organize a leadership team.
2. Get our facts straight. Conduct scientific polls to convince politicians to support criminalization.
3. Recruit high profile spokes-people.
4. Get the press on our side. Conduct a viral social media blitz.
5. Push for a national referendum.
6. General strikes, boycott key tax generators and flash demonstrations at high profile sites. Schools and universities strike first, and then private industry and the public sector. Hurting the governments tax revenue by striking and boycotting in industries that generate the most tax revenue, we can put pressure on the politicians to criminalize tobacco.

Why we need Bible story tellers

God’s ultimate revelation is Jesus Christ, not the written record of His words and actions. Jesus Himself is greater than the writings about Him. And which is the Christian more like, this human Jesus? or sheets of tree fibre spattered with ink? The New Testament writers teach that Christians are incarnations of Jesus, that is, that Christ lives in, with and through us. The NT writers also say that the Holy Spirit lives in, with and through us, and yet again they say this of God the Father. (In other words it is the Trinity who indwells us, lives with and through us. (John 14:17,18,20,23; 15:4-7; 17:21-23,26)). The apostle Paul as well says we are God’s revelation.

How the Bible relates to the Christian might be loosely compared to how software relates to the robot for which it is written. The software is unrealized or only potential until it is installed in the robot and the robot’s actions fulfill the purpose of the software. (the analogy breaks down of course in that we have free will. We are not robots, not slaves to God’s will). So the written Bible as revelation is however unrealized, still only potential, until it is applied in the Christian’s life and the Christian incarnates Christ to the world in the Christian’s attitudes, actions and words. While it is undeniable that there are a few exceptional cases where some rare individual entered into an initial knowledge of God in Christ through the Spirit by reading written Scripture alone, yet the overwhelming pattern for coming to know God and growing in intimacy with and likeness to Him, is through face to face relationships with living Christians. This fact, that living Christians who realize the ideals of Scripture in their daily lives are a more complete and clear revelation than writings on paper, should have implications for the translation and implementation of Scripture.

Now just to be absolutely clear, I believe that every living, viable language needs the complete written Scriptures. I also believe that there needs to be enough literacy amongst active lay Christians (perhaps minimally 10%?) so they can study and correctly understand the complete counsel of God, and help to keep their faith communities faithful to the records and revelation of God’s words and actions through His servants as understood and recorded by the Biblical authors. Every living, viable language needs the entire written and printed Bible in that language.

However, to fully reveal God’s will, the written Scriptures also need to be embodied in living Christians. It is not either or, not an exclusive choice between the two modes, but it is a matter of needing both. That is why translating oral Bible stories to be used immediately by Christian story tellers dovetails so nicely with written Scripture. Where the written Bible already exists in a less-loved and less understood language of wider communication in a bilingual community, this needs to be augmented by story tellers proclaiming and enacting a collection of oral Bible stories in that community’s unwritten indigenous heart language.

Internet Safety

I was finally able to order the black box that will allow the blocking of dangerous websites.  I am toying with suggesting to the bishop of Elephant Island that we structure access to the internet like a reference library.  That is, patron comes and pays  a small search fee, a human librarian takes their request for information, searches the internet for a few relevant sites, then grants access to only those specific sites to the patron pursuant to his specific request.  Cumbersome but safe and it generates a paying job for an Elephant Islander.

Co-author this blog?

Hey if you would like to contribute posts as a co-author, that'd be great.  Just let me know.

Holistic Service

When I was working on my MA in cross-cultural ministry I did a little pilot survey at a university to determine if there was any way the church I was attending might be able to help the students.

This was the best educational experience of my life because it was hands on, directly related to my daily life outside of class.  Some refer to it as learner driven education.

I found that 1st year university students in particular voiced some common unmet needs.  They said they wanted help with getting control on their personal finances for one thing. They also said there was a shortage of gymnasiums where they might go to play floor hockey or volley ball to take a break between studying. They also wished they could talk to people who were already out working in the field they were headed for. They also overwhelmingly said that if a Christian acquaintance would just invite them to some kind of event, they would certainly go!

Spiritual Marginalization in Secular Education

That was my initial/provisional topic for my research project for my MA Applied Linguistics.  I realized however that the sacred/secular is a false dichotomy, a social construct not actually identifiable using positivist means. What I ended up doing was more of a literature review about certain claims by some vocal fundamentalists that "secular" school books were harming their children's faith. On the contrary, I found a lot of solid research demonstrating that in fact school texts have very little influence on kids changing their worldview.  I found instead a lot of evidence that in fact the most influential element in children's worldview change is the presence in their life of someone they admire who respects and loves them. Which reminds me of something Kuhn said about scientific revolutions being social phenomena, where young students are socialized into a scientific tradition/sub-culture/society and then once they are relationally secure, they take a leap of faith to commit to that groups' philosophy.
What principles might we extract from this and how might we apply them?

Why I am writing this blog?

There's a lot of folks out there with lots to say on their blogs. I can't promise that anything I write won't be drivel, but if a few people seem to be encouraged that'll be enough for me.

A word of explanation about the description:
"Talking with friends about incarnating Jesus. Post-Protestant, pre-Constantine, paleo-orthodox, maximally contextualized, non-dogmatic, holistic."

"Post-protestant"- Christian factions, friction and fractions sadden God and give good reason to unbelievers to dislike the institutional church. If we all believe the Apostles' Creed literally, then lets back-burner our irrelevant surface differences and collaborate to transform the world with love!


"pre-Constantine"- The Roman Emperor Constantine early in the 300's AD legalized Christianity, freeing Christians from persecution (you know, being thrown to the lions, burnt as garden torches etc.) and quickly instituting Christianity as the official religion of the (declining) Roman Empire. Christians were increasingly hired into the civil service and church organizations increasingly were involved in the business of state. As a state religion mixing in to state affairs the Church lost a lot of its spiritual and moral authority and got more and more corrupt, leading to such debacles as the Crusades and the Inquisition.  So I think a radical separation of the institutional church and state are crucial for maintaining a clear and pure love that unmistakably speaks of God's supernatural presence and intervention.

"paleo-orthodox" - this is a common term nowadays which by my understanding includes the idea of a more bare-bones Biblical theology that abstains from a lot of speculative systematic theologization that Christendom got bogged down in in later centuries. Specifically I define it as a reference or allusion to the Cappadocian Fathers, who were much taken with the co-indwelling of the three members of the Trinity, and of their drawing humankind (consisting of physical matter and animal life, yet in soul and spirit in the image of God), into this amazing co-indwelling. Jesus the man was absorbed into the Triune Godhead, and we in turn participate in a similar (though ontologically different) co-indwelling.

"maximally contextualized"- by this I mean that as intimacy with God through Christ spreads from culture to culture, the source culture should make sure the receptor culture is free to incarnate the life of Christ in their own culture without pressure to use culturally relative baggage from the source culture. So, in application, a viable society of Christians could base in a home or any other space such as a library, a community centre, cafe, condo lounge, pub, university whatever. And traditional Christianized words, symbols and traditions from the source culture all need to be critiqued for suitability before adopting in the new Christian community in the receptor culture. 

"non-dogmatic"- in accord with Scripture (and many other human traditions) I confess that we humans know very little and greatly misplace our confidence in our ability to understand the universe, ourselves and God.  Sages of the ages and across the humanities overwhelmingly realize that we culturally-bound humans usually project our culturally relative beliefs unto others when we should not. What I believe we need is a stance of radical humility, curiosity, openness, generosity and celebration in regards to the positions and worldviews of others.  We need to tolerate and celebrate our differences if we are going to collaborate in God's loving transformation of the world.
 
"holistic"- scholars (not me!) of ancient Hebrew language and culture have found that God created humankind an indivisible unity.  In recent centuries thinkers have realized that it was pagan Greek thought that introduced to Christian theology the idea of a three distinct pieces: body, soul and spirit.  Scriptures teach the inherent and intrinsic eternal value of the physical creation.  Scripture teaches that this world will be renovated and last forever as the home of a re-created humanity (Isaiah 65:17; 2 Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:1).  Christ cared for the whole person, not just invisible spirits. Our destiny is not wearing white night gowns floating amongst the clouds playing harps. No, we are forever creatures inseparable from the biosphere.  Eternal life will be bodily life in a real world. Scripture pounds home again and again that God's true love ministers to people's physical and emotional needs. Linguistics tells us that the majority of our communication is non-verbal. To communicate God's love incarnate through us then we need to attend to our hurting neighbours' physical, mental, emotional and social needs- to manifest a limited fulfillment of God's loving transformation of the created order.

Well I actually would like more of a collaborative creative writing enterprise. I was listening to CBC radio while driving across the prairies and heard about a guy writing 24 books in a year at the biggest bookstore franchise. He said he wished people would come up to him and interrupt him and chat,  but they don't. So I imagined myself going up to him to chat and looking at what he was writing, and then I imagined I would want to contribute to what he was writing. And that was when I thought of a wiki for collaborative writing.  Well I suppose there's every likelihood of quite a few sites like that already. But anyways we'll try the medium of blogging first but maybe we'll have to migrate to a wiki or discussion forum...?

But anyways I'll be posting random ideas, thoughts, rants, book reviews, experiences and proposals for social action. I really look forward to your comments and I'd be happy to extend author rights as well to any who are interested.