Tim Keel
“When God works within a servant who is wholly available an integrity emerges that cannot be manufactured. This life integration is vital for those who would host and draw out the words of God for and from a community of Christ’s people.”
Archive for July, 2009
In but not of?
“If you put God outside and set him vis-a-vis His creation, and you have the idea that you are created in God’s image, you will logically and naturally see yourself as outside and against the things around you. And you unrightfully claim all mind to yourself, you will see the world around you as mindless,and therefore not entitled to moral or ethical consideration… If this is your estimate of your relation to nature and you have an advanced technology, your likelihood of survival will be that of a snowball in hell. You will die…”
I love God. I love life, I love the life God has allowed me to live thus far. I hold it captive to the grace of God and His wonderful plan that is beginning to unfold right in front of my eyes. God is (definitely) good, all the time, and all the time he is Good. How many times do we recite that in church together? How many times do we take time to think about what that means?
Christians also love to say that they are “in but not of this world” I have said that more then a few times, but I am realizing that is a very hackneyed view of the world. We have made that a mantra and unfortunately it is sticking like peanut butter to the the roof of our mouths. Oh how I wish that peanut butter could be concrete sometimes. By saying that we are in and not of the world we are saying that we exist on a different playing field then the rest of creation. We are saying that we have a cosmic secret and that we are the initiates into this sacred sect and only those of us with the key will make it in. When we make such statements we are saying that we are damning the culture around us to death and we are silently, or not so silently, passing our own judgment on the culture around us and saying that it is not good.
We are of this world. God provided it for us lovingly to use to create culture, to bring him glory, and to create community. We have created great community in churches and seminaries and other places, but at the exclusion of others. Where in the Bible did God say to create culture but to insulate it so that no other voices, no other visions can be shared? The more and more we have become insular and introverted in the church the less and less in touch with the culture we have become. We sit and condemn the culture for what we see, but we do not look into the culture of our churches and communities and see that we are the ones in deeper trouble then the culture around us. One of the purposes of the church is to share the love of God with others and to bring people into loving communion with him. God is not pleased with us I am afraid. No small wonder people have been flocking away from church.What we are creating is not culture, what we are creating is a melange of stupidity ans confusion to be quite frank.
When we decided as a church that science had no basis in the churches cosmology, somewhere around the 15th century, what we began to do was create the “Calvinist social club” and not the church. If we truly believe that God is good, all the time then why do we not listen to the voices of science and even voices from other religions? If someone reading this wants to say “well, God is good, but sometimes…” quite yourself for a minute and read 1 Cor 13. God is in love with his creation, all of it. If we say he is not or that “He never intended..” we are making idols of our own understanding and we are saying that God is not omniscient and omnipresent.
Here is the crux of my post. Science and Biblical understanding can and do run parallel with eachother. God is revealing himself and his absolute hand in all things to us daily through science. D.N.A, The Hubble Telescope, NASA, and so on are all bringing back incredible pictures of a God who has enginered a universe that has his hands all over it. When we say we are in this universe but not of it we are actually saying that we were not created by God and therefore we will do everything we can to not partake in what God has provided. You are saying that all things that work to the Glory of God are not really working to his Glory. It is a slippery slope to say the least.
On the scientific side of things there are noteable athiests such as Richard Dawkins who look at the universe from a preconcieved set of ideals. They let their philosophical presuppositions control how they say science works. Well, on the side of the Bible there are people who look athe the universe from a preconcieved set of ideals. They let their philospohical presuppositions control how they say science works. Both come to very different conclusions and in so doing dig the divide deeper and deeper.
In Ecclesiastes it says that “God put eternity in the hearts of men” but why? I believe it is so we will continually contemplate the universe and our place in it. I believe it is so that we will continually search for him in his Word, in this world, and even in our search for other worlds. God is soverign over it all and there is wisdom to be gleaned from the unverse even though we will never fully understand and fully contemplate it. The whole universe, including us, is in a continual growth in wisdom and knowledge.The process of finding that wisdom is as important as the end result.
One of the preconcieved notions Christians have about the Bible is that it is the final revelation of God. The Bible is a tool, and a tool I hold in the highest regard because it lays the foundations of a life and it is full of wisdom and knowledge and power for living a life in God. But, God uses creation to reveal himself as well. Psalms 19: 1 to 4 (NLT) states:
“1 The heavens proclaim the glory of God.
The skies display his craftsmanship.
2 Day after day they continue to speak;
night after night they make him known.
3 They speak without a sound or word;
their voice is never heard.
4 Yet their message has gone throughout the earth,
and their words to all the world.”
We must remember that God is speaking intimately with us his creation. He does it in so many ways through so many cultures and cosmologies and science and technology. When it is all brought captive to the vision of God we see his majesty and his hanywork in everything. It is humbling and honoring simultaneously to be part of what God is doing and what he is creating daily.
I believe there is a 3rd wave of Christianity coming. In part it is already here. It has been called “The Emergent movement” or Postmodernism or any number of things. Some otherwise clean minded and clear speaking Christians have even decided to use very ahem…earthy adjectives to describe it. I believe this 3rd wave is more connected to the wisdom of the divine and therefore with the mind of Christ then we have been for over 500 years. I can not say that it is going to “explode” like Christianity has and is at different times and places…but I hope so, I believe so. In listening to the cultures and lives of others, and in bringing all things captive to our understandings, and then letting our understandings get tossed around in the turbulence we will begin to grow, and growth is never a bad thing. Growth is necessary because one “cosmological constant” or “truism” if you wish is that we either grow, or we die. Those who wish not to grow become the fertilizer for the next generation of growth to occur. I am not saying the church is dead, far from. But the old ways and paradigms of church are becoming the fertilizer for the next generation of growth, and I am exited, humbled and in awe of the God who allows me to partake in it.
~Selah~
Creator, Creative, Creation
One of the misperceptions of the Christian church today is that if a person is given a talent, a “God given” talent as the church would say, then we have the responsibility to use that talent in the service of the Church. While I agree with that in principle, I believe that there are some incredibly creative people who are Christians and who are outside the church doing incredible things that bring God great glory. I also believe there are non Christian artisans that bring God great glory in what they do, even if it goes unacknowledged. Sharing of our talent in the Church is not ever a bad thing. What is a bad thing is leading a Christian artist to believe that the only place that you can use that talent is in the Church. Many great talents go forever stymied because they are under the belief that God gave the talent and so unless I am at a pulpit in a church using it I am not in God’s will.
If Christians believe, as they should, that creation bears the glory of God (Ps 72:18) then why don’t we believe that the creations that come from creative people do not also bear the glory of God? I know, no one can create a star, or paint the sky that beautiful Colorado sunset orange like he can. But the creation that we do make can bear the stamp and image of God, and it should be seen as such. Yes creation is fundamentally fallen and stained by our sin nature, but that does not mean that some really good things come out of our fallen nature. If anything, it fuels our creative nature because all creative endeavors are in some sense the artists attempt at making sense of their life and circumstances.
When one surveys the world and all its glory and how perfectly we are made to fit into this world it is hard not to be humbled. God created the heavens and the earth ex nihilo or “out of nothing”. No one on this earth can claim that. What a creative person does is takes the elements God created and move them in such a way as to reinterpret the picture. Every painter is dependent upon the flowers that were used to create the pigment to paint the picture that they desire. Every singer found their voice by listening to and then emulating someone at some time. I, as a writer and teacher work to emulate those who have come before me, and then I tweak it and add my own creativity. This is the creativity of God in action. The creative person is simply the vessel.
In Matthew 13: 34 says “All Jesus did that day was tell stories-along storytelling afternoon…” Storytelling is a creative process and even our creator was seen doing it. God is engaged with his people always, and always through the stories and the creative outlets of our lives.
When a person is called “creative” we usually mean they are someone who takes our reality or our world view, and gives it a different spin. My view of a subject comes from several factors, my interaction with the subject, what others are saying about the subject, and what the subject means to me are just a few of the things that determine how I think about something. A creative person takes their interaction with something and thrusts it out onto the world stage and says “this is what this means to me” and in so doing gains an audience of people who agree, those who disagree, and those who are not sure if they are offended, inspired, or just plain tired of the subject. Remember though, the elements of the creation have all been there already. All they are doing is using them to tell their story. They are narrating their life in their art.
All creative undertakings are birthed out of the mind of Christ. We are his workmanship and we are his chosen vessel to bring him Glory. It does not matter if an artist recognizes themselves as that vessel or not, God is glorified because it is straight from the mind of God. He is omniscient (all seeing) and omnipotent (all knowing) and as such everything a person does fits into the mosaic of his plan somewhere.
When creation is finally redeemed at the end of time as we know it the Church is going to have an incredible awakening. It is going to awaken to the fact that while we are God’s chosen people, we are not his only way of sharing about himself. As we see creation as he sees it, as a narrative of the lives of all of his people from all generations, we are going to see that all creation has been on a long and slow march towards one very important end. We will see the narrative point towards God, dying on a cross, redeeming his beloved, and then bringing them home and into His glory. And as the old song goes “As we all see Jesus, what a day of rejoicing it will be!” So rejoice my beloved, don’t be shy. God has a story so great and so unfathomable that he is finishing, and you have in integral part to play in the story, in His story.
Michael Dowd
“Religious insights and perspectives freed from the narowness of their time and place of origin are more comprehensive and grounded in measurable reality than anyone could have possible dreamed before.”
Michael Dowd page 4 of Thank GOD for EVOLUTION
Life in the Labryinth
“Get through the Labyrinth, get through the Labyrinth” is the common refrain of Toggle and his traveling companions in the 80’s movie Labyrinth. I love that movie for so many reasons. Jim Henson is a genius, and the Fraggles…well they need NO introduction, so the movie just enthralls me at different times in my life.
I was pondering today though, what does it take to get through the labyrinths of life? Is it moxy, a steely resolve to get through no matter what, or is it a little of everything? I am a firm believer that life is a journey and not a destination. I know that is a tired old adage, but it is a tired old adage because it has some meaning and therefore has stuck around. However, where you are journeying though is really up to you. If I am going to choose some place to journey, it might as well be in the labyrinth of life with Christ.
Spiritual life is a labyrinth. It has its straight places, its curves, its dead ends and the dreaded “oubliette” or “places of forgetting” where no one dares go, and only the naïve and the tricked end up. But in all these places you can do one thing always. You can always look up. If you are a really good navigator you can even get yourself out of the labyrinth by navigating from the piece of the heavens that you see.
We have all been tricked in the labyrinths of life at different times. We head down one seemingly straight path and end up at a dead end. We take a left that leads to more confusion when we should have taken a right. What is even more perplexing is the fact that sometimes when lost, it is best to hold still and wait for a buddy to come by. Two heads always makes for more wise choices. Too bad that most of us are not inclined to seek that sort of wisdom; we always want to work ourselves out of our own messes.
Spiritually God has been telling me to sit still. I did not realize how hard it is for me to “be still and know that I am God” until he actually called me to be very intentional about it. About every week I have a reminder that I need to be still. It is tough. I want to advance in ministry, I want to get more experience at the church, and I want to go to seminary… all start with I want… But slowly I am turning the page into what God wants, what HE desires of me. I believe God is telling me to be still for a year. If I have my timing right it has been since I had brain surgery in October of last year that he has spoken that to me. I am learning to submit to the guiding hand of my pastor and some very wise and godly friends and counsel. I value them more then they could ever know.
The one thing that will even the playing field in a labyrinth is winter. Think of the kind of labyrinth that is lined with very thick bushes that you cannot see through because the leaves make an impenetrable fortress. When those leaves fall off though you can see straight to the heart of the matter and plot the course home. I am in the labyrinth, I have come through the spiritual winter and I can see the way out…yet God says “be still and know…” And as G.I. Joe once said, “knowing is half the battle.”
The other half of the battle is wisdom. I love the way The Message describes wisdom in Proverbs 3: 13-18:
You are blessed when you meet Lady Wisdom, when you make friends with Madame Insight.
She’s worth far more than money in the bank; her friendship is better than a big salary.
Her Value exceeds all the trappings of wealth; nothing you could wish for holds a candle to her.
With one hand she gives long life, with the other she confers recognition.
Her manner is beautiful, her life wonderfully complete. She’s the very Tree of Life to those who embrace
Her. Hold her tight –and be blessed!”
Wisdom is gained only when we ask for it, and in living life in the ups and downs. Many times when we ask for wisdom God gives it to us, and then he gives us the opportunity to live that wisdom out. It is in the life that we live that wisdom finds its place. If we have all the knowledge and no experience then we have no context for the knowledge we have. Wisdom is the knowledge of God rightly applied.
When you are journeying through life you need many, many things. Life throws everything at you. Sometimes it is soft fruit thrown at you one at a time, other times it is the flames and arrows coming at you so fast all you can do is duck and cover. All the attributes you need in order to face those days, the good and the bad, are wrapped up in the ideas of knowledge and wisdom. The pursuit of knowledge is enhanced by wisdom and wisdom comes in searching for knowledge. It is a conundrum worthy of the best labyrinth.
Step into the Labyrinth, the maze of life. Walk boldly into the places of the unknown. Fall as you might, scarred out of your mind, but boldly walk in those deep and dark places. God is there, and he is near, and in the end you will know Him better. And you will find that in so doing you will have a better knowledge of yourself.
~Selah~
Second Hand Jesus
When I read a book I have a habit of keeping the receipt to use as a bookmark. This is because 1) I am cheap and 2) If the book stinks or just does not meet the expectations I have for it I can easily access the receipt and return the book. I am happy to say that I just threw the receipt for this book away, and I am going to buy this book for many, many friends.
I have known Glen Packiam for a few years. He is my former worship pastor at New Life. In that time I have come to have great respect for his singing. However, towards the end of my time there he was given some opportunities to preach, and I ate it up. His mind is just as comfortable writing music or working through theological concepts and ideas. My proximity to the man does not guarantee that I will give him a good review. Anyone who knows me knows I do not mix words. I will tell it like it is because I have to much respect for a person to blow smoke at them.
This book is a great book that reminds Christians to go deeper. Get through the muck and the muddle and the “Christianese” and the “Sacred Cows” and getting to what God really said and doing what he ultimately wants. He wants you to passionately pursue relationship with him and listen to His words and not rely on the church and other “more Godly” then yourself to do the hard work.
This book is part spiritual biography, part theology, part testimony. It brings the life God wants for us into painfully sharp focus by Glen using his honest and candid look at his own life and where he was vs. where he is headed. If we all do the work to get gut level honest with ourselves, there is a Glenn Packiam in us all at some level.
Glenn uses the Ark of the Covenant and some of the facts surrounding it to guide us through 4 rumors that Christians have for the most part bit into hook line and sinker. I am not going to give them away here, but the questions can and should lead you to much introspection, wrestling, and then growth through the process.
I highly recommend this book for those who have been Christians for awhile and are tired of being on autopilot, and I definitely recommend it if you are a new believer. It will open your eyes and challenge you to go to God first in your relationship and to not fall into spiritual apathy and let the Church do your spiritual heavy lifting. There is only one person on earth who can interceed truly and completely for you, and that is you.
